SWTOR Origins: Shen
by Archontruth
Summary: In the Empire, if you can use the Force you become Sith or die trying. For Shen, a young teacher scarred by tragedy, this simple rule means she will have to find out just how far she is willing to go to survive.
1. Warrior's Tribulations

_Author's Note: When we create a new character we have the chance to dictate their appearance. But what of their story? Each character begins their journey with a vague backstory that leaves the player to fill in the gaps. The inquisitor is a slave discovered to be Force-sensitive. The smuggler captains his own ship. The agent is already immersed in the world of espionage, and the trooper is a skilled fighter joining an elite special forces squad._

_When I created my first character, a Sith Warrior named Shenanigans, I asked myself what she had already experienced in an effort to decide how this person would make their choices in the game. For those who haven't played the class, the Sith Warrior arrives on Korriban already versed in the art of saber combat, sufficiently skilled and impressive that she is drawn into an overseer's power play against an older, more established acolyte. But where did this potential Sith learn to fight? How did she start on the road to Korriban? I had the seed of this story in my mind when I started playing – a story that would shed some light on why my ruthless and occasionally cruel juggernaut made the choices that she did. After finishing the story quest, I decided to write it down._

_07/31/12 - Expanded the early chapters out into their own sections and added chapter titles._

* * *

**Chapter One: Warrior's Tribulations**

"Again!"

For a moment, Shen ignored the harsh command, lying where she had fallen and trying to catch her breath, her head still ringing from the blow of the training saber that had bounced off of the inadequate head protection she wore, just enough padding that her instructor's hits wouldn't actually crack her skull open. Her short, dark hair was damp with sweat under the headgear.

Sergeant Drake didn't bother speaking again when she didn't get to her feet. Instead, his booted foot connected forcefully with her already bruised ribs, eliciting a groan of pain from his prone student. "Get up you lazy little mynock, or I'll use you for target practice."

Shen's brown eyes widened in alarm as the grizzled veteran switched his training saber to his left hand, and wrapped his right hand around the grip of the blaster he wore in a holster under his shoulder. Less than a month earlier, during one of his first training sessions, she had made the mistake of thinking he was bluffing, and had spent the next week in a kolto tank recovering from an agonizingly painful blaster wound to the gut. Forcing her sore, exhausted muscles to move, Shen hauled herself to her feet. Her ebony skin hid most of the bruises that covered her body, but she felt them with each movement. Until recently, Shen had been a schoolteacher who had never held a weapon before, of average height and possessed of a slender build, none of which served her well in the accelerated combat training program she was undergoing. Sergeant Drake, a tall, muscular human with pale skin and graying hair in a military cut, was a good six inches taller than Shen, almost twice her weight, and had been a soldier for most of his life. Shen's first combat instructor, a Twi'lek male closer to her age, had pulled his hits in their initial sessions while she learned how to hold the practice saber, but after a few months he had disappeared, and Sergeant Drake had become her teacher. Drake was merciless, striking her without restraint and forcing her to fight until she couldn't stand. _Which isn't too far off,_ Shen reflected, her muscles protesting as she walked over the few steps to pick up her fallen training sabre.

Even as she got her balance back, a sense of alarm shot through Shen's mind, a piece of undefinable information telling her that she was in danger. She'd had similar jolts of intuition all her life, and had learned to trust them. It was still an adjustment for her, being told that she was feeling the Force, but where the warning was coming from didn't matter. Surrendering to that instinct, Shen whirled back to face her instructor, bringing her blade up in time to parry a blow that would have landed across the back of her head had she been a second slower. Blocking the hit stung her palms, but it didn't hurt as much as it should have, and processing that information in a flash, she danced backward as Drake's elbow flew forward to occupy the space her face had recently occupied. Shen was rewarded with a nod of approval from the combat instructor, then he was on her again, and Shen blocked one blow after another, focused on nothing more than avoiding the next hit. A few more of Drake's strikes got through, powerful, painful impacts that the thin padding of her sparring gear did little to blunt. Soon her arms felt like lead. Feeling her parries slowing down, Shen tried to focus on that moment when she'd _known_where the next hit would come from, when she had felt Drake's intention in the Force, but it proved as elusive as trying to hold onto a fistful of dry sand. The flashes of precognition came at random, and the harder she tried to feel them, the farther away they seemed.

Sensing his student's exhaustion, Sergeant Drake battered through Shen's guard and struck a numbing blow to her wrist that sent her practice saber flying. He followed up with a gauntleted backhand blow across her cheek and then kicked her in the stomach in the same place he had shot her. Agony exploded through Shen's body at the blow to the recently healed wound, and she doubled over, sinking to her knees and clutching her abdomen. When she got her breath back she coughed up blood.

"Get up. We're not done," Drake commanded.

Struggling for breath, Shen got halfway to her feet before her legs collapsed, and she sprawled back onto the floor. "I can't," she gasped, "please, no more."

"Pathetic," he growled. Checking his chrono, Drake shook his head in dismay. "It's barely been three hours. Weak, slow and stupid, that's all you are, girl. Why Lord Syan bothers with a worthless, soft creature like you is beyond me. Now get up and pick up your sword."

Hearing Drake's blaster clear its holster, Shen forced herself to get up on hands and knees, crawling toward her fallen practice saber. Drake snarled in disgust, and kicked her in the ribs, followed by another kick to her stomach when she fell onto her side. Shen felt something tear inside her with a new explosion of pain, and she felt a dampness staining her tunic as the wound reopened. She curled into a ball on the floor, shuddering in pain and coughing up blood with each breath.

Drake sighed, and holstered his blaster, walking over to the weapons rack to shelve the practice sabers. Activating his wrist comm, he brought up the citadel's medical frequency. "Medics to the training hall; throw this piece of trash back in the tank." Without another word or a backward glance for his injured student, Drake left the training hall.

* * *

Floating in the kolto tank, Shen dreamed of better times. It was growing harder to remember that just a handful of months earlier, life had been so different.

Shen had first come to the Imperial colony world of Tyrin III when she was a toddler, in the company of her mother and older brother. Tyrin III had been settled by the Sith Empire for less than a century, a tropical moon orbiting a gas giant on the inner edge of the system's habitable zone. Mostly covered with crimson-hued jungles and oceans tinged pink by the microscopic plants that suffused them, Tyrin III would have been too hot for human habitation if not for its rapid axial spin and the peculiarity of its polar orbit around the gas giant, which ensured that no section of the planet's surface was exposed to the brutal light of the system's primary for more than a quarter of the day. The planet's native flora had adapted to absorb heat during the day and release it during the orbital and planetary nights, acting as a global temperature regulator. The planet was still miserably hot year-round by the standard of most sentient species, but it was livable, and the colony had grown rapidly as an exporter of foodstuffs and refined biological products and medicines. In the years before the war against the Republic, the Empire had deemed the world's output of food and medicines sufficiently important that a Sith named Darth Denebric had been sent to govern the planet.

After Shen's father, had died in a speeder accident on their previous home world her mother, a biologist, had accepted a job with a manufacturer of pharmaceuticals on Tyrin III. Business was good and Shen's mother was able to provide a comfortable life for her and her brother. They went to a fine school, and Shen's brother joined the military when he finished his education, quickly earning an officer's commission. For her part, Shen found her calling in teaching, taking a job instructing young children in the capital city. She found her career rewarding, and in time fell in love with and married a fighter pilot in the Imperial service, a comrade and old friend of her brother.

It was on Shen's twenty-sixth birthday that her world fell apart. Her mother and brother visited to celebrate with her, and they had a family gathering at the home she and her husband owned in the heart of Tyrin III's capital city, near the spaceport. Shen's last memories of that night were sitting down to dinner, and hearing a series of deafening blasts from the sky above, then a ground-shaking impact, and the building collapsing around her.

The next thing Shen remembered was waking up in a private clinic in the citadel of the planetary governor, Darth Denebric. The doctors and nurses there did their best to answer her questions. Weeks had passed since the accident, caused by an aging space freighter's power reactor failing catastrophically as it came in to land at the spaceport, causing it to break up and crush three city blocks in its fall to the ground. Shen had been severely wounded, her face smashed in by a flying chunk of permacrete, her bones broken and organs damaged by the building's collapse. When the rescuers had pulled her from the rubble, she had been expected to die from her injuries within days. Instead, she lingered for weeks.

In the wake of the accident kolto was in short supply, and Shen had been determined to be too damaged to save. But seemingly at random, Darth Denebric's apprentice had singled her out for transfer to the citadel's clinic. Shen had been subjected to extensive kolto immersion treatment and cybernetic reconstruction of her damaged body. When one of the nurses showed Shen her face in the mirror for the first time she barely recognized herself; half the skin on her face had been replaced with shining metal prosthetics that jutted from her reconstructed jaw and cheeks and ringed her eyes. Additional sub dermal cybernetics were laced throughout her body, reinforcing weakened bone and muscle, and replacing the functionality of organs that had been damaged or destroyed. Her left arm and leg, crushed beyond repair, had been replaced with full prosthetics as well. Overall, almost a third of her body was machine, although the facial prosthetics were the only parts that were immediately obvious.

Shen learned that her husband, mother and brother were among the hundreds dead in the wake of the tragedy, their remains interred along with the other victims while she was comatose.

Shen was still in shock when Darth Denebric's apprentice, Lord Syan, came to visit her the next day. Shen had never been more frightened in her life than when the towering Zabrak encased in a black suit of full body armor, eyes shining yellow with Force power, had instructed her in how her life was to proceed. He told Shen that she had been saved and her body repaired at great cost for one reason: she was strong in the Force, and that power had kept her alive when she should have died of her wounds. She was told that she would be sent to the Sith Academy on Korriban, and as she was the first native of Tyrin III to be sent to the Academy, she would be prepared for its rigors before departing, so that she would represent her home world well. Syan also told her in no uncertain terms that if she was found wanting in his estimation, she would join her family in death.

Prior to the accident, Shen had never been in a kolto tank in her life. Such expensive healing was beyond all but the wealthy and grievously ill. Recently, though, she had become depressingly familiar with the sensation of drifting in the greenish buoyancy-neutral fluid, the oxygen mask pressed to the lower half of her face her only contact with anything solid, while the Selkath medicine repaired her injuries and made her fit for the next beating. When one of the medics tapped on the tank and pointed up, Shen kicked her legs, rising to the surface of the tank, climbing through the open hatch at the top of the tank with the help of a medical technician who sluiced the remaining kolto off of her skin and back into the tank before wrapping a robe around her.

When Shen climbed down from the top of the tank, her abdominal muscles still sore and aching with each movement, her escort was waiting for her. She thought about them as she slipped behind a privacy screen off to the side of the room and changed into clean underclothes and the plain white breeches and tunic identical to all the other clothes that had been provided for her. Whenever she moved around in the citadel, she was accompanied by a pair of armored, helmeted Imperial soldiers. She didn't know their names, or if they were the same ones each day, but they were always with her. "Lord Syan wants to see you," one of them informed her in a cold, half-mechanical voice.

A cold knot of dread twisted in Shen's stomach at those words, but she pushed the fear away and nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The soldiers flanked her as they left the medical wing, leading her to the main turbolifts that would take them up to the quarters of the high-ranking Sith at the top of the citadel. When they got in the turbolift, though, the guard punched a button, and the car began going down rapidly. "Where are we going?" Shen asked, surprised.

"To see Lord Syan," was the only answer she got.

When the door hissed open, it revealed a round room with two more uniformed soldiers manning consoles, and beyond it a hallway with walls and a low ceiling of black durasteel, the floor a metal grating. The hall was dark, lit only by widely spaced reddish lights. Occasional alcoves in the walls lead down to solid-looking metal doors. Shen gasped, taking a step back at a sight she had only seen in holovids – an Imperial detention center. "What are we doing here?"

"Move along," was their only response. One stepped out of the lift, the other pushing her to follow, and taking up position behind her as they walked down the hall. Shen's heart pounded as she walked, fear flooding her mind. Had she failed? Had Lord Syan decided she was too weak to send to Korriban? Passing one door, Shen heard muted pleas from the other side in an alien language she couldn't understand, punctuated by the sound of electrical discharges. From behind another door came dreadful laughter that went on and on. Terror was squeezing Shen's heart like a fist by the time the trooper in front of her stopped and punched a code into a keypad to open a door. He stepped through, and Shen was ushered into the room beyond, the door hissing shut behind them ominously.

The room seemed to match Shen's imagining of what a torture chamber would look like. Along the far wall were three empty force cages, their energy walls glowing orange. There was a long table in the middle of the room, with sturdy leather straps for the restraint of subjects. Beside it was a wheeled tray covered with a nightmarish array of blades, needles, and devices Shen couldn't even identify. A sinister-looking droid of humanoid design stood, deactivated, next to a holoterminal built into the wall.

"In you go," one of the troopers said to her, deactivating the front wall of the center force cage.

"What?" Shen asked breathlessly, putting her back to the table so she could see both of her guards.

"Get in there. _Now_," the trooper said, while the other drew a stun baton from his belt and thumbed it to life, blue arcs of electricity running up and down its length. Glancing at the restraint table, Shen could see faded stains of blood and who knew what else, and the faint scent of disinfectant. She didn't know what fate the Sith Lord planned for her, but she knew she didn't want to be trapped in this room. Without conscious thought, Shen's right hand, resting on the tray of torture implements, slowly wrapped around the handle of a knife she had seen resting there. Her left hand, the strong, sturdy prosthetic, balled into a fist, and her recent combat training sprang into her mind, unbidden. _Throw the knife at the stun baton to short it out. Punch his partner with the prosthetic; it's strong enough to hurt him even through armor. Draw his blaster and stun him with it, then take out his friend and the droid. Then…_ Shen's calculations faltered. Then what?

In a moment of despair, Shen realized that she had no way out. She didn't know the codes to open the door, and no idea if she could force it out of the guards. Worse, even if she somehow managed to escape the citadel, and even if she was able to evade those who would pursue her, she knew she couldn't survive as a fugitive. Shen wasn't an expert on augmentation technology, but even when Drake wasn't beating her half to death teaching her to fight, she was regularly in and out of the medical section for tune-ups to the cutting-edge cybernetics that kept her alive and mobile. Without regular maintenance that Shen didn't have the knowledge or credits to do on her own, her replacement limbs and organs would quickly fail, and she needed Lord Syan for that maintenance. All she could do was beg Syan not to kill her, promise to do better, whatever he wanted.

The troopers had tensed on seeing Shen reach for the knife, but a moment later she let go of it, lowering her head in defeat. The pair wasted no time grabbing her arms and dragging her over to the force cage, shoving her into it, and activating the front panel, trapping her behind walls of energy. Once that was done, they turned and left, leaving Shen alone.

Minutes turned into hours, and Shen remained alone. She sat down on the grated metal floor, resting her head against the back wall, solid durasteel rather than energy. Occasionally she heard footsteps outside, and her heart would hammer in anticipation, but no one came. Hunger began to gnaw at her gut, and in the dry, climate-controlled air of the interrogation room, she started to become thirsty. Was this her punishment? To be left here to suffer the deprivations of her body? Shen's imagination produced a truly unpleasant scenario. Nothing she knew of the Sith made her think that Lord Syan wasn't capable of simply leaving her here until she died.

The next few times Shen heard footsteps passing in the hallway outside she tried calling for help, but no one answered her pleas. More time passed, and despite the distractions of an empty stomach and growing thirst, Shen had actually fallen into a light sleep when the door hissed open. Jerking awake, she scrambled to her feet as Lord Syan stalked into the room and regarded her, his lip curled into a sneer of disgust. "My Lord, please-," she began, then was cut off abruptly when Syan's hand came up and an invisible pressure closed her throat.

"Pathetic," the Zabrak grated. "Look at you, caged like a nerf for slaughter without so much as an act, a _word_ of resistance! I am sorely tempted to let you die now, for I begin to doubt that you will ever have what it takes to be a Sith. You have been weak for too long. As you are, you would be an embarrassment on Korriban, quickly slain by a more worthy acolyte."

Unable to speak, unable to breathe, Shen clawed at her throat. Her eyes blurred with tears as her lungs burned for air. _Is this how it ends? Am I going to die here?_ As blackness began to eat at the edges of her vision, Syan lowered his hand with a sigh, allowing Shen to gulp in fresh air, coughing and gasping. "My master tells me this is a failure of my teaching, and perhaps he is right. Do you even understand why you are in this position now?"

It was another moment before Shen could speak, voice raspy from abuse. "I failed Sergeant Drake's training exercise."

"Wrong. You are here because you allowed yourself to be placed in that cage."

"My Lord?"

"Why did you let those two throw you in there? I was watching," the Zabrak waved negligently at a holocam mounted in the ceiling. "I saw the moment when you thought about resisting, and then you decided not to. Why?"

"Where would I go if I had fought them? Even if I could escape I don't know how to maintain all of these cybernetics you put in my body."

Syan just gave Shen a puzzled look and then laughed ruefully. "Now I understand my error. I've been so focused on readying you physically for Korriban that I underestimated how unprepared you are mentally to be a Sith. You're not here because Drake beat you to a pulp again. He's a master arms man and you've been at this for a few months. Even with the Force as your ally I don't expect you to defeat him yet. The test you failed today took place in this room, when you allowed yourself to be placed in that cage."

"I don't understand, my Lord."

"I realize that now. You're not thinking like a Sith, and perhaps that's my fault." The Zabrak paced closer to her cage. "If I were kill you right this moment, do you think I would be punished for your murder?"

Shen swallowed hard. "No, my Lord."

"And if I dragged you in front of an assembly of your students and colleagues at that school you taught at and butchered you in front of all of those witnesses, do you think your local constables would come to arrest me for that deed?"

"No, my Lord," Shen repeated.

"Of course not. I am Sith. My master and I rule this world. If you prove yourself capable you will one day be a Sith, as well. So why did you think I would be displeased if you had injured or killed those two I sent to drag you down here?"

"You wouldn't, my Lord," Shen said slowly, comprehension dawning.

"Exactly. Perhaps this should have been your first lesson. To be Sith is to be unrestrained by things as mundane as law and conscience. A Sith does what he wills, and the only beings who can command his obedience are those strong enough to _compel_ it. If I had personally commanded you to step into that cage you would face a choice of obeying or challenging me and dying by my hand. But that pair of desk jockeys who brought you down here?" Syan shook his head. "You have more combat training than the pair of them together. The person you used to be has reason to fear their uniform. The person you must become does not. They had no means to compel you, yet you let them control you."

"I understand, my Lord," Shen said, glancing hopefully at the cage's controls.

Syan smiled unpleasantly. "Not yet, you don't. But you will. Since you failed your first lesson today, your second will be more direct: never act – or fail to – based on assumption. Always _think_about the consequences of your choices. Droid, activate." At his words, the droid in the corner sprang to life, its photoreceptors glowing bright yellow.

"Ready to serve, master," the interrogation droid said in the incongruously cheerful voice better suited to a protocol model as it lurched forward into the light. Its body was harshly angular; its four arms all ending in different appendages, most ending in different kinds of blades and needles.

"Torture this prisoner until she can't scream anymore," Syan instructed the droid.

Shen stared at Syan in horror. "What?"

"Parameters, master?" the droid asked him.

"Initiate Protocol Aurek," the Zabrak replied.

"At once, master," the droid replied, sounding frightfully eager. It jacked itself into the cage's control interface, and Shen could hear mechanisms below her feet powering up.

"Please, have mercy, my Lord! I understand now! I'll do better, I promise!" Shen pleaded as Syan turned away, heading for the door.

"You don't understand yet, but you will. Droid, if she survives have the guards throw her in a cell when you're done with her. No kolto. Let her heal naturally." The door hissed shut behind him, and Shen was alone with the droid.

The whirring sound beneath Shen's feet got louder, and a heavy weight began pressing down on Shen's body. Frowning, Shen braced herself, but the downward pressure simply grew stronger, forcing her to her knees, then prone on the cage floor. Shen realized there was a plate generating artificial gravity under the cell. It increased her weight until she couldn't even lift her hear or arms, the grating of the floor cut painfully into her skin, drawing blood when she tried to move. Just breathing became difficult and painful. "Stop," she gasped, "can't… breathe!"

"Apologies, mistress. You are not recognized as part of my command structure. Only Lord Syan and his designates may command me. I would encourage you to do your best to continue respiration, mistress. Under Protocol Aurek I am not obligated to sustain your life functions, and in this gravity you would most likely suffocate if you lost consciousness." The droid tapped away at the cage controls, and the energy walls of the cage began humming ominously. "Please feel free to vocalize any distress you may feel throughout our time together, mistress. I assure you, my audio receptors will not be damaged." Then it pressed a button on the cage controls. The energy walls crackled, then arcs of energy jumped from their orange surface to strike Shen's body.

A raw scream of agony exploded from Shen's throat as pain shot through her, more than she'd ever felt in her life. She drew breath only to cry out again as the cage discharged power into her body again. Twice more it fired, sending new waves of pain through her each time.

Her muscles twitching from the aftermath of the energy blasts, Shen dreaded receiving more shocks, but they didn't come right away. Instead, the droid did something else, and burning hot air heavy with the scent of vegetation filled the cell. Shen began perspiring immediately, recognizing the feeling. The droid was venting air from outside the citadel into the cage. It was the middle of the planetary summer, and the capitol had to be at the height of a day cycle, when few ventured outside without protective clothing, as the air temperatures reached dangerously high levels for non-indigenous life. Now each difficult breath seared her lungs.

"There we are," the droid said cheerfully. " I'm told a bit of fresh air is beneficial for organic life forms. Now, back to work." The cage walls discharged twice more, eliciting new cries of pain.

"Please, stop," Shen coughed. Without warning the cage blasted her again, stronger this time.

"Do try not to speak, mistress. The cage is now programmed to respond to intelligible vocalizations with extreme prejudice. Do feel free to scream, though. That's allowed," the droid informed her sardonically, its photoreceptors gleaming with malice.

The guards stationed in the detention center were no strangers to the horrific noises of sentient brings being brought to the edge of their endurance and over it, all in the name of acquiring information the Empire might need. It had even become a tradition for the guards on duty to place bets on how long it would take for new arrivals to break under torture. The most recent prisoner to go into the interrogation room was an oddity, though. It was rare for Lord Syan to personally visit prisoners in the detention level; usually they were brought to his quarters if he needed to speak to them. Even stranger was how the session proceeded once he left. Screams and pleas they were used to, but the droid not asking any questions was unusual. Eventually, when hours had passed and the screams had become faint enough that they were barely audible through the door, they gave up on the pool and just assumed that someone had managed to seriously displease Lord Syan. They thought no more of it when the droid finally finished its work almost half a day later and ordered the unconscious, dehydrated cyborg covered in cuts, bruises and energy burns deposited in a cell for indefinite detention.


	2. Lesson Learned

**Chapter Two: Lesson Learned**

Shen had believed that Sergeant Drake's lessons were a new definition of suffering, but Syan's torture droid had cured her of that misconception. Time had lost all meaning in the sea of pain; everything had lost meaning except trying to breathe in the crushing gravity and burning air, enduring an endless stream of shocks. At some point, hours after she had stopped screaming because her voice was gone, she had fallen into blackness, expecting oblivion.

Instead she woke up with an aching body and raw, cracked skin, lying on the hard metal floor of a small, bare detention cell. Ceiling, walls and floor were a uniform black metal, relieved only by a grated light in the ceiling and a simple refresher in one corner. When Shen made herself move, abused skin and muscle protested. The refresher dispensed clean water, allowing her to slake her thirst. With nothing else to do she waited, trying to ignore the lingering pain of the burns covering her body.

Sometime later, the cell door hissed open. Two more of the ubiquitous armored troopers were outside. "Stay where you are, prisoner," one commanded, hand on his stun baton, as the other stepped into the cell to place a tray of food on the floor. Then he fished something out of a pouch on his belt and set it down beside the tray. "Lord Syan sent this for you, said it's your head if it's damaged." Then they left. The door hissed shut, and Shen was alone again.

When her meal was finished, Shen picked up the object the trooper had left behind, a fist-sized pyramid of metal and plasteel etched with intricate runes. The object glowed with a reddish inner light, and when Shen picked it up, the top began to glow brighter still. A diminutive hologram of a red-skinned Sith with a lined face and long facial tendrils appeared, somehow managing to look down on Shen with distain despite being less than two hand spans in height. The holographic Sith identified himself as Darth Lor and the device she held as a Sith holocron built for basic instruction of acolytes. Shen quickly discovered that the little apparition was far more sophisticated than the teaching holos she was accustomed to, and bore more resemblance to a droid brain programmed with the complete consciousness of an individual.

The avatar of Darth Lor began her instruction by teaching her about Sith history, focusing on the lives and victories of notable Sith. She learned about Naga Sadow and Ludo Kresh, and the Great Hyperspace War. She learned about how Exar Kun struck down his former Jedi Master on the floor of the Senate, and how Ulic Qel-Droma had risen to power before straying from the way of the Sith and being stripped of the Force as punishment. This and far more the holocron taught Shen, and she began to understand. Individual Sith were often very different from each other, but it didn't take Shen long to realize that there was a common theme that united these famous and respected Sith: they were all sociopaths.

Shen had known all her life, as anyone living in the Sith Empire did, that the Sith were erratic, unpredictable and dangerous, and that a wise person avoided having anything to do with them as much as possible. What the holocron taught her along with the history of the Sith was that they did have a kind of consistency to their philosophy: a good Sith's first victims were their own conscience and compassion. They seemed to value personal freedom for the sake of itself, despised restraint in any form – even if it was common decency or kindness – and respected strength free of any sort of limitation. The Sith Masters whose lives Shen learned about were proud of betraying old friends and family to obtain favor or some bit of new power or knowledge. They glorified in horrifying acts of butchery, wiping out an entire city for being the home of one traitor, razing worlds in the act of warfare and drawing strength in the Force from the anguish of entire peoples. These Sith had reveled in striking down their mentors once they had surpassed them in power. "Mercy is a weakness," the hologram of Darth Lor preached. "'Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.' That is the Sith Code, which you must live by."

For days the holocron taught, lectured and questioned Shen. When she was tired, she slept. Food was brought for her regularly. Denied any other contact, Shen found looking forward to the holocron springing to life, if only to have someone to talk to, in spite of how horrifying the things it told her were. Shen knew that she was hearing the true history of the Empire, far different from what she had learned in her previous life, and it repulsed her. So much death and strife, and for what? The pretty struggles of a few mad Force-users?

In a moment of reflection, days later, when the holocron had fallen silent so she could digest what she had been taught, Shen fully understood the truth of her situation, and disgust overwhelmed her. No wonder Lord Syan was disappointed in her! He believed in this insanity, reveled in it! Worse, Shen understood with cold clarity that unless she could convince Lord Syan that she had embraced these beliefs, he truly would kill her, and not feel a moment's remorse or pity. Mercy was an alien concept to him. Shen understood with cold clarity that she only mattered to him as a useful tool; by performing well at the Academy on Korriban, she would elevate the stature of the world that he would rule when his master, Darth Denebric passed away or died at his hand. If he didn't believe she could excel at the Academy, he would murder her and wait for the next Force sensitive to emerge from Tyrin III.

Shen's idle thoughts drifted, as they often did, to a happier time, when she had a family and a fulfilling career, and things made sense. She thought of the children she had taught, bright and happy and full of potential, but a disturbing thought intruded on her reminiscence. The madness wouldn't stop if she died. Syan would do all this again in a month or a year or a decade to the next potential candidate he got his tattooed hands on.

There would be another poor soul being beaten unconscious by a brutal Imperial combat instructor. What if it was Miya, a bubbly, perpetually smiling girl with shiny yellow hair and bright blue eyes, the one who wanted to be a painter when she grew up, and brought "Mrs. Shen" fresh fruit from her family's farm? What horror would Pohl face, a clever Rodian boy who was always so brave and upbeat, even when he was picked on so often for being one of the few non-human students his age?

Shen thought of her niece and nephew, only toddlers and already destined to grow up without a father, though thankfully her sister-in-law hadn't been at the party when the freighter fell. If Shen was Force-sensitive, then what if one of them had the ability as well? Imagining her niece and nephew one day being tortured to the edge of sanity just for hesitating to fight made Shen shudder in horror. No, she had to convince Lord Syan that she believed every horrible bit of the Sith teachings. Picking up the holocron, she stared into its depths, accepting that she would have to internalize Darth Lor's teachings.

As though sensing a change in Shen, a new determination, the history lessons ended, and more practical lessons became available to her. Darth Lor began instructing Shen in the basics of Sith Force techniques. Fear had been a part of her life since the accident, but focusing her anger was a challenge at first, until she realized that neither Lor nor the Force cared where that anger came from. Shen had only to dwell on Lord Syan and the senseless cruelty of the Sith, and she was amazed by the amount of hatred that bubbled up from the well of fear that had churned inside her for months. Emotionally reinforced, Shen found it easier with each passing day to feel the Force, not in random flashes of intuition, but as a constant presence, her anger making it an ever-present warmth just over her shoulder, always there, waiting. Then the holocron began teaching her ways to use it. Her discarded meal tray moved around the room, at first in fits and starts, then flying through the air in graceful arcs. The holocron taught Shen how to meditate, focusing her rage and hate and drawing the dark side into herself. She learned how to use the Force to accelerate the healing of injuries, and her burns quickly faded to scars. She learned how to subsist on a few hours of sleep a night, falling into a Force trance, rising refreshed to learn more. She began filling the idle hours with exercise and calisthenics to strengthen her body, and the holocron even taught her the basics of hand to hand combat favored by the Sith.

Less than two months after her incarceration began came the day when the holocron came to life, and Darth Lor regarded her steadily. "You have learned what you need to know, acolyte. Return to your master." Then the holocron went silent, and wouldn't respond to her attempts to reactivate it. The next time the guards came to her cell, Shen told them that she was ready to see Lord Syan, but they just laughed at her and left. On a subsequent visit, one of them icily explained to her that she was going to stay right where she was until orders were sent down that said otherwise.

At first Shen was confused, but when she thought about it as a Sith should, she understood. Lord Syan wasn't going to come and get her. She had to prove she was ready to continue the training by going to him. With that understanding, she began planning. Besides her meals, the only time her cell door opened was when a medic from the citadel clinic came down to check on her implants and cybernetics. The next time that happened, Shen was ready. The brutal torture she had endured and her passivity during captivity had paid an unexpected dividend, in that the guards believed her to be broken and harmless. To them, she was just another unfortunate prisoner languishing in an Imperial dungeon. As a result, while they still sent two guards to being her food, only one of them accompanied the medic for her checkups.

When the medic arrived, on this visit a cheerful brunette with bright green eyes named Felle, Shen assumed her earlier air of listlessness, submitting quietly to the scans and checks. This time, though, Shen slipped her hand into the medic's bag when the guard wasn't looking, and found what she needed, a hypo of powerful anesthetic. Palming it, she waited until the checkup was done before making her move. As Felle busied herself with packing up her tools, Shen opened her hand and seized the hypo with her telekinesis, propelling it as hard as she could at the flexible join between the trooper's helmet and breastplate. Her aim was true, and the hypo's needle pierced through to his neck, discharging its contents into his carotid artery. The man barely had time to start in surprise before he collapsed. Felle turned as the guard clattered to the durasteel floor, and Shen rose to her feet, wrapping her prosthetic left arm around the smaller woman's throat, applying pressure to her windpipe to cut off her voice. "Struggle or scream and I will break your neck, Felle," Shen whispered in the medic's ear before relaxing her grip slightly so the other woman could breathe.

"What are you doing, Shen?" Felle asked in alarm, squirming in Shen's grasp.

"Leaving," Shen replied. Reaching out with her free hand, Shen got a Force grip on the unconscious guard's blaster and yanked it out of its holster, bringing it to her hand and pressing the barrel to Felle's temple

Felle gasped, and her sudden terror was almost palpable to Shen. It was… intoxicating to feel that, and know that she had caused it. "You can use the Force?"

"I'm going to be Sith, Felle. You know what that means? I would shoot you and enjoy it, so don't give me a reason to." For a moment Shen couldn't believe she'd said that, and was sure Felle would know it was a lie, would sense Shen's nervousness, but instead more fear poured out of the medic and she nodded. "Now, I have an appointment with Lord Syan and I don't want to keep him waiting. So drag that guard in here and help me get his armor off." Felle did as instructed. Shen had to fight not to look at the obviously terrified medic in disbelief. Was controlling someone else really this easy? There was something alluring about inspiring that kind of fear.

Once the guard's armor was off, Shen donned it herself. It was uncomfortably snug across her chest, but otherwise fit well enough to pass a casual inspection. When she lowered the helmet onto her head and looked out at the world through the red-tinged HUD, Shen felt different, more powerful. Shen slipped the holocron into a pouch on her belt and then turned her gaze on Felle, crouched uncertainly by the fallen trooper. "Inject yourself with one of those sedative hypos." When Felle opened her mouth to object, Shen pointed the blaster at her. "Now." Swallowing hard, Felle reached into her bag, took out one of the sedatives, and fired it into her own arm.

Felle's fear just felt so good that Shen's next words were out of her mouth before she could consider them. "I'm going to shoot you when you pass out." Felle's eyes went wide with alarm, and new waves of panic radiated from her. Shen watched her try to scream, to fight off the effects of the drugs, before she ultimately succumbed and collapsed. Holstering the blaster, Shen reflected for a moment. Why had she said that? It was cruel to have instilled more fear in Felle just to enjoy the sensation of it. It was disturbingly like something Syan would do.

Then Shen remembered where she was, and shook off the introspection. She still had to get out of the detention level. She used the guard's keycard to open the cell and left it for the first time in months. A moment's fiddling with the armor's internal mechanisms produced a map of the detention level. Shen headed for the exit, trying to imitate the measured pace of an Imperial soldier. Twice she passed other uniformed guards, and her heart raced, but none of them spared her as much as a glance. By the time she reached the guard station at the turbolift, she was cautiously optimistic. The two troopers stationed behind the consoles there had their helmets off, and they looked up when she approached. "Where's the medic?" The desk sergeant asked.

Shen pitched her voice as deep and close to the guard's as she could. "Cyborg needed more work."

The sergeant frowned. "You're not supposed to leave them alone, Holtz. You know that."

Heart racing, Shen kept up her casual pace, drawing closer to the pair. "The cyborg's broken. She won't cause trouble."

The soldiers exchanged a glance. "It's against protocol… but you're probably right. You left her a comlink to signal that she's done?" Shen nodded and then stepped into the turbolift. The back of her neck itched, expecting a shout or a blaster bolt, but nothing happened. The door hissed closed. Exhaling a sigh of relief, Shen keyed the turbolift to the top level of the citadel. Weight pressed down on her as the car shot upward out of the bowels of the earth toward the heights. A minute later the turbolift doors opened. Shen stepped out into an airy hallway with wide windows, seeing sunlight for the first time in weeks. Following another route called up on the HUD, Shen headed for Lord Syan's quarters.

The halls of the upper level were mostly empty, and Shen made it all the way to Lord Syan's door before she encountered more guards. Their armor was different than hers, more ornate, and they held force pikes in their hands, basters holstered at their size. She could sense their disdain as she approached. "I think you're lost, prison guard," one of them said, his voice dripping with superiority.

Anger ran through Shen. How dare this ignorant Imperial lackey talk down to her? Shen felt a premonition in the Force, and knew in an instant that she would not be able to talk her way past this obstacle. She hesitated for a moment, but she'd known since she resolved to complete the Sith training that she was going to have to fight. So she drew her blaster, flicked the setting to "Stun", shoved it under the chin of the soldier who had spoken to her and pulled the trigger. Shen saw the blue flash behind his helmet's eye plates as the blaster's neuron-disrupting pulse wreaked havoc on his central nervous system. Even as he started to fall, the Force shrieked a warning at her. Grabbing the dead guard's force pike as he collapsed, Shen danced back a moment before the surviving soldier's humming blade sliced through where her head would have been. Thumbing the weapon to life, Shen squared off against the guard as he pushed a button on his wrist plate and alarms began shrieking through the citadel.

"You're dead," the soldier grated as they squared off.

"Not today," Shen replied, parrying his first hit and scoring his armor with an easy riposte. She knew she needed to kill this man quickly before more guards showed up. He was skilled with the force pike, but not as good as Sergeant Drake. More important, Shen had the Force as an ally now, and it answered her urgency and anger, flooding her body with power. Shen pushed that power into speed, and a flurry of blows later she knocked his helmet off with a rising blow to his chin and then slammed the butt of the pike into the side of his head. His eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed without a sound.

Shen felt a sense of mild disbelief as she took in the pair of trained soldiers she had defeated in mere moments, and she wasted a moment in exhilaration at the thrill of victory, before shouts and footsteps from down the hall spurred her to action. Slamming her palm into the door control made it hiss open, and she ducked inside, sealing it behind her and firing her blaster into the controls, hoping that would keep it sealed against the reinforcements. She could hear shouts and hammering against the door as she ducked into the main foyer of Syan's apartments. Her worries that Syan might not be there faded when she sensed a well of darkness in the Force a moment before Syan stepped through a doorway on the other side of the main room, ebony armor gleaming in the sunlight, an unlit lightsaber in his hand. "Are you here to kill me, interloper?"

Shen was surprised that she could sense a sardonic amusement behind Syan's serious mien. He sensed who she was! He was playing a game. Shen shook her head, wrenching her helmet off. Dropping to one knee, she replied, "No, my Lord. I'm here to learn."

Syan was silent for a moment, and Shen could hear the hiss of burning metal as the reinforcements outside started cutting through the door. After a few more moments passed, Shen heard Syan key his comlink on. "Stand down the alarm, captain." Pause. "I'm aware of the intruder. The matter is handled. Stand down." Then he keyed the comlink off and stepped forward to stand before Shen as the alarms faded. She managed not to flinch when she heard the _snap-hiss_ of his lightsaber igniting, forcing herself to stay still even when he brought its blade centimeters from her cheek. "Perhaps we will make a Sith of you after all."


	3. Down a Dark Path

**Three: Down a Dark Path**

Shen ducked under Sergeant Drake's horizontal swing with practiced ease, bringing her blade above and behind her to parry the first dueling droid's downward strike with her vibrosword, and aiming a Force-augmented kick at the legs of the second sword-wielding droid, sending it sprawling. Rolling away from Drake and the still-standing droid, she rose to her feet and deftly decapitated the prone droid with a single slice before turning to face her remaining opponents. Drake and the last standing droid circled her warily, the blades of their vibroswords humming and blurring as they advanced.

Yesterday, Shen had defeated Drake in one of their training saber duels for the second time. Today when she arrived, he had military-grade combat droids to back him up, and they moved from training sabers to more dangerous vibroswords. The simple, matte black armor Shen now wore in her training duels was a gift from Lord Syan, "appropriate for a Sith acolyte", he said. The vibrosword had been given to her as well. The armor was substantial enough to slow down a vibroblade strike, but it wouldn't turn away a strong stroke or stab, so the stakes were much higher. So far, Shen had managed to avoid serious injury, and with one droid down the odds were looking better. Still, she couldn't be complacent. She could feel Drake's anger at her, and his desire to injure or kill her to avenge the slight of losing to the student he had disdained for so long., and underneath his anger, driving it, Shen could feel his fear of her. He knew now what she was, had heard the rumors from those who had fallen to her in her prison escape, and he had to be wondering if she held a grudge for all the beatings he had given her at Lord Syan's order.

From the duelist droids, by contrast, Shen could feel nothing at all, and their lack of emotion or intent had required some adjustment. Now she was learning their attack patterns, and it was time to end the match. Drake and the droid both attacked at once from opposite sides of her. Shen sensed the path of Drake's thrust and avoided it, then let the Force flow through her legs, jumped over the droid's horizontal swing, landed behind it and stabbed her sword through its torso with a backward thrust, twisting the blade before yanking it free. The droid collapsed in a shower of sparks, and Shen whirled to catch Drake's next blow on her blade as he moved forward. One on one, they traded blows, and this time Shen sensed that it was Drake who was getting tired. The Force filled her, refreshed her, and with a grin that had no humor in it, she went on the attack. It was exhilarating putting Drake on the defensive. Even with the muscle she had put on in recent months he was still much bigger and stronger, but his advantage was gone. She could feel what he was going to do before he did it, and the Force made her faster, more nimble and sure. The ending was inevitable. Shen broke through his guard and struck at the base of his weapon, slicing through the hilt and severing two of his fingers in the process. As the dismembered weapon and digits fell to the floor, Shen met Drake's eyes, seeing his pain and fear there, feeling it in the Force. It felt good. As his lips parted to speak, Shen stepped forward and smoothly plunged the vibrosword's blade through his breastplate and into his chest. Drake's face went white from pain. Shen twisted the blade cruelly and he shuddered, coughing up bloody saliva.

"Weak, slow and stupid, that's all you are, sergeant," Shen said quietly. She pulled the blade free, and Drake collapsed, blood leaking from the wound and his mouth. Kicking his sword away from his hand, Shen crouched and ripped the wrist comm from his arm. "Medics to the training hall. Throw this piece of trash in the tank." Shen allowed herself a moment of basking in the pain and panic radiating from Drake as he struggled to breathe through lungs filling with blood. Then she turned her back and left the training hall.

On her way back to her quarters, Shen was intercepted by a courier, who approached her nervously. "Yes?" she asked curtly.

The courier flinched slightly. "Summons, milady, from Lord Syan. He requests your presence at the Court of Justice."

"Oh?" Shen asked, curious despite herself. She could feel no duplicity in the man, just fear that she still couldn't quite believe she now inspired. "Well then I suppose we shouldn't keep him waiting. Lead the way." Shen followed the courier out of the citadel and into the adjoining administrative complex that housed the planet's high courts, where criminals were judged. As they neared the main chamber of the Court of Justice, Shen was surprised at the number of people gathered on the plaza outside. There were at least ten thousand capital residents massed around the Court, many bearing banners with angry slogans, demands for justice. All day Shen had been feeling a distant, slow wave of anger through the Force, growing as the day wore on. It was coming from these people. This close, the rage pouring from the mob was intense, the anger and desire for vengeance heady to feel. Shen was about to ask the courier what cases were being heard that brought so many people to the Court, but he ducked through a doorway into a richly decorated sitting room.

"Please wait here just a moment, milady," the courier said, then bowed and left Shen alone. Bemused, Shen examined some of the artwork in the room, enjoying the warm sensation of the collective anger radiating from the mob outside.

When Shen heard the door open behind her a few moments later, she turned smoothly – and felt her eyes widen in shock as her brother's widow, Mari, stepped into the room, eyeing her uncertainly. "Mari? What are you doing here?" Shen blurted out.

Mari's jaw dropped as recognition dawned. "Shen? Is… is that you?" Her hand covered her mouth. "Y-your face! When they said you were alive, I didn't- what happened to you? Oh, what am I saying, you're alive!" Rushing over, Mari hugged her, and after a startled moment, Shen hugged her back. "Oh, Leri and Kinn will be so happy; we've all worried about you. When can you come home?" Taking a step back, Mari took in Shen's garb and the sword in its sheath across her back. "What are you wearing, Shen? You look like a soldier, and- is that blood?"

Shen became aware of a slight dampness on her cheek, and wiped it away with her gauntlet. Blood glistened on the back of her hand where Drake had coughed on her before falling. "Oh. It's not mine, Mari. As for the armor, it's a gift from Lord Syan." Mari only looked more confused. "I can use the Force, Mari. I'm going to go to Korriban to be trained as a Sith." Extending a hand, Shen grabbed hold of a piece of fruit from a side table and pulled it to herself with the Force, catching it in her hand and extending it to her sister-in-law. Mari recoiled from the offering as though it was a live snake, and Shen was surprised to see the sudden fear on the other woman's face. Shen forced down her dismay. _If she's scared of me, I know I'm succeeding. She doesn't see her husband's sister anymore. She sees a Sith._

The courier returned moments later, sparing them both from an awkward situation. Mari didn't look back as she was led away, while Shen was guided down a different hallway. Walking into the main chamber of the Court of Justice, Shen found herself behind a dais on which Lord Syan stood, addressing a packed courtroom. At a gesture from one of the functionaries, she stepped forward to stand behind and beside Syan. All the observer seats were filled, and there was standing room only. As Shen watched, Mari joined the crowd watching the proceedings. Standing below the dais were two humans, one male and one female, along with a Rodian and a Duros, all dressed in prison jumpsuits and shackles. A mixture of fear and resignation emanated from them, distinct in the Force amid the well of anger from the people watching.

"Months have passed since the crash of the freighter _Steadfast_ just kilometers from here" Lord Syan was saying, his voice artificially amplified to fill the room and reach the people outside. "The people of the Empire are strong, and already we rebuild and the survivors move on with their lives. But we should not forget that it was not chance but the error of sentient beings that is responsible for the thousands of lives lost, and many more torn apart. The crew of the _Steadfast_ perished with their vessel, paying for their failure with their lives. They were not the only culprits, however. The home port of the _Steadfast_ was Nar Shaddaa, and these beings you see before you were the maintenance crew responsible for the freighter's space worthiness. They failed at their duties. Our inspection of the wreckage and documentation of the _Steadfast_ has concluded that this accident was due to falsification of maintenance records. These beings are here to face judgment for their crimes."

Stunned by the revelation, Shen heard the angry roar of the crowd, and felt their rage wash over her. Stepping up to the edge of the dais, Shen gazed down at the mechanics, feeling her own hate roar to life. Thoughts of her mother, of her husband and the life she had lost filled her. Then Lord Syan's hand fell on her shoulder. Shen turned to see him close beside her, a resolute look on his face. "The woman you see beside me is one of the survivors of the _Steadfast's_ crash. She lost her entire family to the negligence of these beings, and her body bears the scars of their crimes, as do many of those gathered here today. All of you are here today to see justice done, and you will not be disappointed. I sentence these beings to death. The hand that ends their lives, however, will not be mine but one of your own, one who has lost as much as any of you."

For a moment Shen hesitated. Part of her, the part that remembered being a teacher and devoting her life to caring for children, quailed at the idea of cutting down the four beings who stared up at her, filled with dread and terror. But the crowd roared in approval, and Shen's rage, a constant companion now, tore at the qualms of the person she had once been. These lazy mechanics were responsible for everything she had endured, everything she had lost!

"I can feel your hate," Syan murmured, his quiet words for her alone. "Don't deny this. You know what you want. What's holding you back is weakness, useless to a Sith. Strike them down in all your anger."

A dam broke inside Shen, and her vision filmed red as she reached over her shoulder and drew the vibrosword from its sheath, thumbing its blade to life. With a wordless roar she leapt from the dais, swinging the sword down and bisecting the cringing human man from crown to crotch with the humming blade. As the twitching halves of his body fell to the floor, Shen whirled and separated the Rodian's head from his body. A rising diagonal slash that started at the right hip and ended at the left shoulder cut the Duros in two. Then only the human woman was left, and Shen felt a snarl of frustration rise in her throat. She had killed the rest too fast, in a frenzy. They hadn't suffered enough! Dropping the sword, Shen wrapped her gauntleted hands around the woman's neck and squeezed, the Force making her strong. The woman's eyes bulged, her manacled hands clawing ineffectually as Shen's armored arms. Their faces were close enough that she could see the rictus of hatred etched onto her face reflected in the woman's frantic eyes, and part of her silently screamed in horror in the recesses of her mind, but it wasn't enough. Shen kept squeezing as the woman's face turned red, then purple. She didn't let go even when the woman's eyes rolled up in her head and she stopped fighting. She didn't let go until she felt the mechanic's death in the Force, and then she allowed the body to fall to the floor, its neck ringed with black bruises in the shape of fingers.

The silence was the first thing that registered for Shen after that. She could hear her breath, heavy in the sudden quiet. She heard someone retching. When she turned to face the people who were assembled, her fellow citizens, they recoiled, avoiding her gaze. Shen realized her boots, her armor, her hands were soaked with blood, and viscera and entrails covered the floor around her. The head of the Rodian had rolled over to near some spectators who shied away from it. Shen's eyes fell on Mari, standing in the front row, wiping vomit from her lips. Mari looked at her for a moment, stricken, then turned and fled from the room.

Their anger was gone, Shen realized. They were just shocked now; afraid of her. People began leaving, in silence, some looking back over their shoulder fearfully at the carnage Shen had created.

"Well done, if a bit messy. Still, a fine example," Lord Syan said as he stepped up beside Shen, deftly avoiding the puddles of blood and guts. "I'm proud of you." When the smell of the carnage really hit her, Shen had to fight not to vomit herself, but succeeded. In minutes, they were alone, and the doors of the hall boomed shut. "Get yourself cleaned up and then come meet me in the citadel's shuttle bay."

Shen blinked, looking at Syan in surprise. "My Lord?"

The Zabrak smiled. "I believe you're ready for Korriban. The other acolytes won't know what hit them when you get there. Now go, make yourself presentable, you'll want to make a good impression on the instructors at the academy."

Shen returned to her quarters in a daze. Mechanically, she went through the motions of visiting the refresher, then cleaning her armor and sword. Her thoughts were in turmoil. She couldn't escape thinking of the killing. Before today she had never killed anyone in her life, yet all Syan had to do was give her a reason, an _excuse_, and she had butchered four people in cold blood, without hesitation. Even the people who had come to see the criminals die had been shocked by her brutality. As Shen put her armor back on, she saw a stranger in the mirror. Even here, in her quarters, far away from danger, her features settled into a scowl and anger boiled in her. Not just anger at Syan anymore. She was angry at the people she had killed, and the people who had judged her for doing the killing. She was angry at Mari, for daring to look at her that way without having a clue what she had endured.

Her rage simmered as she made her way to the citadel's shuttle port. When she arrived at the main terminal, Syan was waiting for her. "This way," he said as he led her down a hallway devoid of people. A door opened at the wave of his hand, and he led Shen into a spacious, sparely furnished antechamber, one wall of which was one-way transparisteel. When Shen saw on the other side made her stop in her tracks. In the darkened room on the other side, a holovid was playing, a children's story featuring the adventures of a cloyingly cute animated animal and its friends in the woods of Corellia. Sitting in small chairs watching it were the children from the class Shen had taught before the accident. Miya was there, playing with her blonde locks absently as she giggled at something in the holovid. Pohl was there, looking bored and talking with his friends. There were a dozen other children there, all her students, their names running through her head as she looked at them, along with two of her adult colleagues, supervising the group.

"My Lord, what are they doing here?" Shen asked, dreading the answer as she sensed Syan's amusement.

"They believe that they are here to visit 'Mrs. Shen' to cheer her up during her long convalescence. The extent of your recovery is not general knowledge, although I suspect the attendees of today's trial will soon spread the good news. The actual reason for their presence is something else. Despite your impressive progress, before I send you off to Korriban, I must be sure that your desire to become an excellent Sith is paramount in your mind. They are here to help you prove yourself to me, one last time." Syan drew a standard military issue detonator from his belt and placed it on a small table between them. "This trigger will release a lethal nerve gas into that room. The doors are already sealed. You're going to push the button."

Shen recoiled in horror, backpedaling from the table and the detonator. "I can't do that. I won't."

"You can and you will. I've sensed the hate in you, the anger. You are gifted in the Force, and your rage will make you powerful. Do you want to hate me? Go ahead; it will only make you stronger. But you will either prove to me that you're willing to do _whatever_ it takes to survive, or that you are still weak, in which case I will strike you down here and now." With those words, Syan unhooked his lightsaber from his belt and ignited it, bathing the room in a crimson glow.

In an instant, the situation crystalized in Shen's mind. Syan was a master lightsaber duelist, and her vibrosword was not enhanced with a cortosis weave. If he attacked her with his lightsaber, she would die.

"So you kill me. Then what? How long will you have to wait for another candidate? Years? Decades? How do you know that they'll be as capable as I am? You've seen me fight, my Lord. I'll represent you well."

Shen had a moment of hope when Syan paused, and deactivated his lightsaber, but then the Zabrak shook his head. "No." His hand came up, and purple arcs of lightning shot from his fingertips, slamming into Shen, throwing her back against the wall and sending her muscles into agonizing spasms, her diaphragm paralyzed so she couldn't even cry out. When her vision cleared, Syan stood over her, holding the detonator out to her. "Being Sith is about more than fighting well, acolyte. Being Sith is about survival, and seeking power. If that means killing you kill, even if those who fall to your blade don't deserve it." He dropped the detonator beside her hand, still twitching from the lightning blast. "Does hope stay your hand, acolyte? You can't save them. Even if you prove yourself a failure and choose oblivion over life, they'll still die. I'll bring them back here to test the next acolyte I train and the next after that if necessary. Nobility has no place in the makeup of a Sith." Igniting his lightsaber again, Syan placed the glowing blade centimeters from her neck. "Now make your choice." Looking back and forth between Syan and the detonator, despair blossomed within her, but it vanished just as quickly, drowned out by hate and rage and fear. All her life Shen had imagined herself as someone who would sacrifice for others, but in that moment, she faced the truth that she didn't want to die.

A snarl of hate contorted Shen's face as she picked up the detonator in unsteady fingers. A slow smile spread across Syan's face, and she hated him even more for it. _Someday, I'll make you pay for this,_ Shen silently promised as she pressed her thumb down on the trigger. Syan backed off, and Shen got to her feet, legs moving of their own accord to stand before the window. _The least I can do is watch._

Clouds of green gas erupted from the vents in the sealed room, and panic erupted. They screamed in terror, rushing for the doors, pounding on them futilely. Then the coughing started, the children and adults alike clutching at their throats, gasping and retching. Their pain and fear pounded at Shen's mind like hammer blows, and there was nothing pleasant about it. One by one they collapsed with blood leaking from their eyes as the nerve gas did its deadly work. One by one Shen felt their deaths through the Force, each one tearing at her blackened soul. Little Mari's bloodshot eyes stared sightlessly as she lay where she had fallen, her doll falling from her limp fingers. Pohl's skin had turned a pallid shade of white in death, his purple blood pooling around him. Within a minute they were all dead. Shen's vision blurred with tears. With a _crunch_, Shen's prosthetic hand gripped the detonator so tightly it shattered, bits of plasteel falling from her hand. Turning to Syan, she threw the crushed bits of the detonator at his feet. "Now are you satisfied?" she asked, shaking with rage, unsure if she hated Syan or herself more at that moment.

The Sith Lord smiled. "I am. You'll make a magnificent Sith. Now come. Your shuttle waits."


	4. Possession

**Chapter Four: Possession**

_Korriban_

"I'm not going back into that tomb!" Vette declared, her footsteps coming to a stop behind Shen as they walked down the dry, dusty valley on Korriban toward the crypts of the ancient Sith Lords.

"Yes you are," Shen replied calmly, not breaking her stride.

After a few more steps she heard an electrical _crack_ behind her. "Poodoo! That hurts!" the crimson-skinned Twi'lek slave girl complained, jogging a few steps to catch up with Shen, who looked over her shoulder with an amused grin that seemed to incense Vette further. She started swearing at Shen in Huttese. The Sith acolyte ignored it and kept walking, Vette following reluctantly behind.

Shen had seen enough of Vette's smart mouth within minutes of meeting her to understand that arguing with the alien girl was pointless, so she didn't bother. She'd simply set the slave collar grafted to Vette's neck to shock her if she got too far away from the controller and started walking. At the Academy's entrance, when Shen informed her new slave that she would be guiding her master through the Tomb of Naga Sadow, the Twi'lek thief had managed to endure three increasingly powerful shocks before sprinting after Shen. Since then she'd only forgotten a few times that she was on a tight leash.

"Listen, that place is full of traps, crazy Sith, attack droids and feral predators. I almost died in there."

"None of that concerns me, slave," Shen replied. "I need to retrieve a lightsaber from the tomb, and the only reason you're still alive is because you can help me. I can take care of the failed acolytes, the droids and the animals, and you're here to make sure we find the hidden switches and enter the cavern that holds the prize. Now stop whining. You sound like a child."

"At least give me my blasters," Vette said sullenly. The Twi'lek girl was unarmed, and Shen had taken possession of the pair of small, powerful blaster pistols that the thief had been captured with.

"You'll get them back when I trust you to hold them, slave. For now I'll keep us safe. Think of this as… encouragement to keep your wits about you."

"Great," Vette muttered, but offered no further complaint as they made their way down into the tomb entrance.

_Childish and impertinent she may be, but this little alien is good at her job,_Shen admitted to herself hours later. Vette had successfully disarmed or avoided every trap Naga Sadow's architects had built to safeguard his tomb, and she'd managed to stay out of the way and unharmed while Shen cut down the looters, failed apprentices and vicious wildlife that infested the more trafficked areas of the tomb. They'd found and triggered all four hidden switches scattered around the tomb, and now they ventured deep into its recesses, where the dust lay thick on the ground, and few tread.

The dark side was strong all over Korriban, but here in the tomb of the legendary Sith it was palpable, filling Shen with strength and confidence.

Vette stepped into a massive chamber with a ceiling soaring high overhead. "This is it. The entrance to the secret cavern is here. Just… let me get my bearings," Vette said, glancing around at the crumbled statues and pillars around them.

The scuff of a boot on stone behind her gave Shen all the warning she needed to launch a spinning kick that caught Vemrin – a rival acolyte who had been sending his lackeys to try and kill Shen since she arrived – square in the face and sent him sprawling to the stones. He rolled back to his feet in a flash, his own vibroblade up in a guard as he squared off against Shen. "Take your time, slave. Just have the entrance uncovered by the time I finish killing your new master."

"I didn't think you had the stones to face me yourself, Vemrin. Have run out of minions to send to their deaths? I think the other acolytes are learning that you're not the one they need to fear." Shen twirled her blade in an effortless loop. "The ones I haven't killed, anyways." Without taking her eyes off of Vemrin, Shen barked, "Find the door, slave. Killing this dog won't take long."

Vemrin charged forward, and Shen met his blow with a smooth parry, sparks flying as their vibroswords met. "My passions run deeper than yours," he roared. "I am the true essence of what it means to be Sith!"

Shen laughed, launching a riposte the scored Vemrin's armor. "Poor, foolish, soft boy. You don't know anything. About me, or about what it means to be Sith."

"After today you will be forgotten," Vemrin grated through clenched teeth. "This ends here and now!" Stepping back, he directed a powerful Force blow at Shen, who shoved it away with her own will and fired back, slamming the other acolyte back into a crumbled pillar. He barely recovered in time to roll away from Shen's leap and downward slash that sheared off his shoulder armor.

"You can't win, Vemrin. I'm stronger than you are," Shen taunted him as they struck at each other in a flurry of blows. Despite her words, Shen knew it would be a difficult battle. Vemrin was good with the sword, better than Drake had been, and while Shen could sense that she was stronger in the Force, Vemrin was no slouch. Even when she managed to get a Force grip on his neck and lift him off of his feet, he managed to free himself before she could crush his throat.

They dueled back and forth between crumbling pillars and statues, trading blows and parries, scoring each other's armor. Soon both were bleeding from minor cuts. Vemrin started circling around her, driving her backward with heavy blows, and Shen realized he was driving her back toward a pile of loose stones. Guessing Vemrin's plan, she held her ground before she could trip over them, and was ready when she felt him reach out with the Force and pull on several of the larger stones with the intent of driving them into her back. Flashing a grin at the last moment, Shen leapt straight up, and added the momentum of her own telekinesis to the stones. They slammed into Vemrin with incredible force, throwing him into the far wall with bone-shattering force. He fell limply to the ground with a groan of pain. Shen leapt over to him and separated his head from his shoulders with a single stroke. "You lose, Vemrin," she whispered.

"Nice work," Vette commented from the corner of the room, her head popping up from behind a boulder.

"The outcome was never in doubt," Shen replied, cleaning the blood from her vibroblade on Vemrin's robe before stalking over to the Twi'lek. "Have you found the door?"

Vette nodded. "This way." Shen followed Vette to a false door in the wall. "This is where your friends caught me. All we have to do is get this open." The door had been closed for centuries, and it stubbornly resisted their efforts at first. It took Shen and Vette's strength and a healthy Force shove to get it open. Cautiously, the pair made their way down the dark tunnel that was revealed. After a few minutes they stepped out into a large chamber and stared. "This is it," Vette murmured.

The tomb beyond was massive and ornate, but Shen only had eyes for the sarcophagus at the top of the stairs. She let Vette go first, though there were no traps to be found in this room. When Shen reached the dais on which the sarcophagus rested, though, she felt a stirring in the Force. Wary, Shen drew her vibrosword, holding it at the ready. A nimbus of light surrounded the sarcophagus, and from it a pale, humanoid figure rose to face Shen. The apparition was garbed in the manner of an ancient Sith, masked and hooded. The power of the dark side emanated from it with startling intensity. Vette gasped, and Shen spared a glance at the Twi'lek, whose face had paled from crimson to pink. "I assume you can see that too," Shen said.

"What is it?" Vette asked.

"What's left of a dead Sith," Shen answered.

"I AM LORD TRACIC, FIRST OF NAGA SADOW'S ELITE WARRIORS," the spirit's hollow voice boomed, its words crawling into Shen's mind both through her ears and the Force. Vette clapped her hands over her ears with a wince. "WHO DARES DISTURB MY REST?"

"My Lord, forgive my intrusion," Shen said cautiously. "I have come seeking a lightsaber hidden in this tomb, that it may serve the Sith once more."

"YOU WOULD DARE TO STEAL MY LIGHTSABER?" the shade rumbled ominously, the dark side energies of the tomb stirring.

"I would honor it, my Lord," Shen replied quickly. "I would carry its blade to taste the blood of the Empire's enemies once more, and bring honor to your name in this age."

"YOU ARE ARROGANT, PUP," Tracic's ghost snarled. "BUT THE FORCE IS STRONG IN YOU. WHAT WILL YOU OFFER ME IN EXCHANGE FOR MY LIGHTSABER?"

"I would not presume to know your desires, my Lord. What would you have of me?" Shen asked.

The shade laughed, a horrid noise. "CLEVER, PUP. WHEN I WAS INTERRED, MY SLAVES WERE BURIED HERE WITH ME," The shade swept his hand back toward the wall of the tomb behind the sarcophagus, where skeletons both human and alien lay, many with their arms still encircled by the chains of dark metal affixed to the walls. "THEIR LINGERING AGONIES FED ME. I WOULD FEED AGAIN." The ghost's eyeless gaze turned toward Vette.

"What? No way!" Vette exclaimed, backing away from the sarcophagus.

Shen felt her gut lurch. _Will I never see an end to Sith demanding I do terrible things at their whim?_ Evaluating the situation though, Shen didn't see an appealing alternative. Lord Tracic was dead, but she could feel his power, heavy in the air. Sith shades were strongest close to their mortal remains, and she had seen the charred corpse of more than one acolyte who had met their end seeking treasures defended only by the angry dead. When Shen turned to Vette, the slave girl saw the decision in her eyes. She turned and ran.

Shen let Vette get halfway down the stairs and then used the Force to yank her feet out from under her. Vette fell down the rest of the stairs with bruising force, and rolled to a stop at the base, groaning as she got her arms under her and started to rise. Letting the Force boost her jump, Shen leapt down to the base of the stairs, landing behind Vette and wrapping her arm around the girl's neck, squeezing. Vette struggled against her, but Shen was stronger and better armored. Vette's struggles weakened, and then she passed out, going limp. Shen held on for another heartbeat, and when she was satisfied the Twi'lek wasn't faking it, let go. With a sigh she picked up the girl's unconscious form in her arms.

Shen carried Vette back up the stairs, where the Sith shade watched, rubbing its phantasmal hands together. "THIS SLAVE IS SPIRITED. I WILL ENJOY HER DEATH." Shen didn't respond. At a wave of Tracic's hand, one set of manacles clicked open. Shen swept the bones away and then lifted Vette's wrists up, closing the restraints around them. Finished, she turned to Tracic. "YOU WILL HAVE YOUR PRIZE, ACOLYTE." The spirit stepped back from the sarcophagus, and the heavy stone lid grated back. "TAKE MY BLADE, AND LET YOUR ENEMIES KNOW ITS MIGHT." Shen reached down into the sarcophagus. Amid the bones and dust, her hand closed around a metal hilt, and she drew it free. The lightsaber was of ancient design, sturdy and simple. This was the weapon of one who often used it, not a show piece to impress. Shen thumbed the activation plate and the crimson blade sprang to life, its functionality after countless centuries of dormancy testament to its craftsmanship.

"You honor me, my Lord," Shen said bowing to the shade. Tracic nodded. The sarcophagus lid slid shut and the apparition faded, though Shen could still sense its presence, thick in the air. Glancing back at Vette, Shen felt a pang of regret. She turned off the collar's proximity trigger. She could spare Vette that discomfort at least. The slave had served well getting her here. It wasn't a fair reward. With a sigh, she turned and left.

Darth Baras was pleased by Shen's successful return, and named her his apprentice on the spot. After congratulating her he had departed for Dromund Kaas, instructing Shen to follow the next day. After celebrating into the night, Shen retired to her quarters. Though tired from the day's efforts and aching from her fight with Vemrin, sleep eluded her

Staring at the ceiling, Shen could only think of Vette, and what she had done to the unfortunate slave. With time for reflection, Shen felt guilt, and seethed with a hatred that sprang at a multitude of targets. Lord Syan. Lord Tracic. Herself.

Vette was a slave and a thief, but did she deserve her fate? Intellectually, Shen knew that the Twi'lek would have faced harsh punishment or execution for her attempted theft of Sith artifacts had she not possessed useful knowledge, but a quick blaster bolt was a far kinder fate than starving to death in a cold tomb, alone with the ghost of a Sith Lord. It was an odd question on the face of it. Shen had cut down slaves, rebels and fellow acolytes by the dozen since arriving on Korriban, never considering who deserved death. The children on Tyrin III hadn't deserved… her mind shied away from that fresh psychic wound. Life was cheap in the Empire. No one had asked why she returned alone, not even the overseer who had turned Vette over to her. They just assumed the Twi'lek was dead, and none of them cared how or why. Vette didn't matter to anyone whose opinion was important to Shen, so why should the slave be important to her?

Giving up on sleep, Shen put her armor back on, cleaned and mended by the Academy servants during the evening's festivities. Hooking her new lightsaber on her belt, Shen left her quarters and ventured out onto the high balconies of the Academy. By day Korriban was stained red by the sun and rock, but in the night the harsh lines of the valley were shaded in blacks and grays. A cool wind washed over Shen as she tried to understand what troubled her. It wasn't as though her choice was one that anyone would condemn. Baras or any of the overseers would likely praise her for placating the ghost so easily.

The Sith Code was clear. The weak existed only to serve the strong. If that meant being sacrificed for the advancement of their betters, so be it. No one at the Academy cared that Shen had abandoned a slave to die a cold, lonely and painful death in an ancient tomb, and they would have ridiculed her had she chosen to fight the shade.

That was the core of it, Shen realized. Against Syan she would have had no chance of victory had she fought him. The choice then was suicide or survival. But had she faced the same choice today? Was Tracic's shade truly unbeatable? Unhooking her new lightsaber from her belt, she rolled it across her palm, thinking.

"_You will make a magnificent Sith."_ Syan's last words to Shen echoed in her mind, and her hands clenched into fists.

"Not if I give in to fear." Shen whispered to herself. That was the answer. She hadn't given up Vette because she knew Tracic was stronger; she'd done it because she was afraid he_might_ be. "I'm not a scared little schoolteacher anymore, and it's time I stopped acting like one," Shen told the wind. Coming to a decision, she leapt over the parapet, slowing her fall to the ground with the Force.

Shen made her way down the valley and back into Naga Sadow's tomb. She avoided or killed the few opponents she encountered, though many shied away from the crimson glow of her weapon rather than fight. She retraced her steps back to the hidden chamber. The tomb's scavengers had picked the bones of her onetime rival clean, and Shen smiled at the pleasant thought of vermin feasting on Vemrin. This time she was able to open the hidden door with the Force alone. The lightsaber, attuned to the dark side, was making her stronger. But was she strong enough for what she was planning? "One way to find out," Shen murmured. Bracing herself, she unhooked the lightsaber from her belt and entered the chamber. She could feel Tracic's presence stirring, but his attention was directed elsewhere; at Vette, whose mind was a beacon of terror. When Shen ascended the stairs and stepped onto the dais, she could sense Tracic's presence laying heavy over Vette's mind; the Twi'lek girl's eyes were open, but they stared into space, empty. Tears ran down her cheeks, and her face was contorted into a visage of despair. "Tiva… Mom… No!"

Shen's eyes narrowed in disgust. Tracic wasn't content to simply feed off of Vette's pain as she starved, he was already attacking her mind with nightmares to feast on her terror. Wasting no time, Shen struck the first blow. Drawing heavily on the room's powerful Force aura, she lifted the heaviest boulder she could find and hurled it into Tracic's sarcophagus. Before it hit, there was a massive surge of dark side power, and it was deflected away, slamming into a wall. Vette slumped against the wall, her eyes sliding shut, as the aura of Tracic's power vanished from around her.

The air in the room got colder, and the Force roiled as the shade of Lord Tracic manifested once again. "YOU DARE?" it thundered.

Shen ignited the lightsaber and stood firm before the ghost. "I changed my mind. I'd like my slave back."

The spirit screamed incoherently, and the air stirred, then began to swirl around the dais. "YOU WILL SUFFER AN ETERNITY FOR THIS INSULT!"

"I don't think you have the power to back that up. Care to prove me wrong?" The first thing Lord Tracic's ghost tried to do was yank the lightsaber from Shen's grasp. She held tight to it with both hands. "Is that all you've got?" Shen taunted the dead Lord. Tracic's hands came up, and the shade blasted her with Force lightning. Shen brought the lightsaber up, catching the deadly attack on the crimson blade. Tracic fired off another gout of lightning that she deflected. "Any more tricks?"

A tickle of warning with the Force made Shen duck as a fist-sized stone flew through the space her head had just occupied. Shen could hear stone grating on stone all around her, and watched as numerous bits of rock floated up into the air on the current of Tracic's will. "I WILL CRUSH YOU!" the shade howled, and the stones swirled around the dais, one after another flying in to strike Shen at unpredictable angles.

"Oh hell," Shen said to herself, throwing herself into the fight, dodging some stones, deflecting others with her own power, and batting smaller ones apart into a cloud of dust with the lightsaber. The spirit interspersed more forks of purple electricity with its hurled stones, and Shen had to be careful to keep the lightsaber between herself and Tracic. One hit from that lightning and she would be helpless.

The spirit was drawing on the dark side power of the tomb, but Shen was pulling that same power into herself. As the bizarre duel continued, the oppressive quality of the air began to lessen. Shen was getting tired, but she noticed that fewer stones were coming her way, and it was taking the spirit longer to summon the energy to hurl lightning at her. Its ethereal glow even seemed to be fading slightly.

"Are you getting tired, shade?" Shen taunted. "I thought Naga Sadow's elite would put up more of a fight.

"ARROGANT WHELP!" Tracic redoubled his attacks, but Shen found her center in the Force and deflected each attack until eventually they stopped. Tracic's ghost was little more than an outline. "YOU SHALL NOT HAVE YOUR PRIZE!" it rumbled, then lifted a hand. The boulder Shen had attacked the sarcophagus with rose into the air – and flew toward Vette's comatose form.

Feeding her rage at the cowardly, cruel ghost into the Force, Shen reached out and grabbed the boulder with her own power, stopping it less than a meter from Vette. The massive stone trembled in the air as two wills contested over it, neither dark sider willing to give in. Then gradually, bit by bit, the rock began sliding back, away from Vette, as Shen won control of it. With one last exertion of her will, Shen tore the boulder from Tracic's grasp, and sent it hurtling back toward the sarcophagus.

"NO!" the shade roared, but this time it lacked the strength to stop the boulder's path. It slammed into the sarcophagus with all the power of Shen's fury, shattering the burial chamber and crushing the brittle remains within to dust. The spirit howled wordlessly, its incorporeal form wavering.

"Fade into oblivion, shade," Shen said. With an explosion of dark side energy that ripped through the air and sent up clouds of dust into the air, Tracic's form collapsed, dissipating into nothing. As the adrenaline wore off, Shen realized how tired, sore and drained the fight had left her. Extinguishing her lightsaber, she picked her way through the rubble to where Vette lay. The Twi'lek was physically unharmed other than the bruises she had endured from her scuffle with Shen. Hoping the old Sith ghost hadn't damaged her mind, Shen struck Vette hard across the cheek. "Wake up, slave."

Vette woke with a start, screaming in terror. "Aah!"

Shen gripped Vette's chin, making the wide-eyed girl look at her. "Calm down. It's over."

Vette came to her senses, and then scowled, eyes going hard as she wiped the tears from her face. "You! You left me here with that… that thing!" Shen dodged an awkward kick from the chained slave.

"I came back, didn't I? The ghost is gone now. His power is broken." Shen gestured to the crushed sarcophagus.

"It… it's gone?" Vette said in disbelief. She looked back at Shen, confused. "Why did you come back? You got what you wanted, didn't you?"

Shen hesitated, looking away from the slave's piercing gaze. She couldn't admit her fear, of course. "I couldn't have beaten him when we first arrived. I needed his lightsaber. A vibroblade can't deflect force lightning." She pointed to the black scorch marks all over the room. It wasn't the whole truth, but it would do.

"So what now? Are you going to get me out of here?" Vette asked, hopefully, glancing up at the chains that encircled her wrists. The chains had no visible means of opening, but Tracic had given her the clue. Concentrating on the manacles, Shen sensed a switch hidden inside the metal, one that only a Force user could trip. With a thought the manacles clicked open. Vette rubbed her wrists, the skin raw from earlier struggles.

Shen regarded the slave thoughtfully. She had faced Tracic, faced her fear. Now that it was over, what _was_ she to do with the young Twi'lek thief? "You have been… useful to me. I'm travelling to Dromund Kaas in the morning, and I could use a personal slave. If you wish, I will claim you as my own. The overseers will not deny Darth Baras' apprentice" The look of distaste on Vette's face showed what she thought of that idea. "The alternative is that I hand you back to the overseers. For attempting to steal Sith artifacts you'll be sentenced to a few decades of hard labor excavating tombs. That is if they don't simply execute you."

Vette swallowed hard and then forced a weak smile. "In that case I'd be happy to serve you… master."

Shen helped Vette to her feet. "Good. Then you're going to need these," Shen said, handing the Twi'lek her blaster belt, twin pistols in the holster. Shen watched as Vette buckled the belt on. "We need to get moving. That shuttle won't wait for us, and it's a long walk back to the Academy." Shen headed down the stairs, listening for the sound of a blaster clearing leather. If Vette was going to turn on her, this would be the time to do it, armed and with no witnesses. It didn't happen though; the Twi'lek girl followed her out of the tomb.

As they walked up the valley toward the Academy, the sky was beginning to brighten, heralding the dawn. "I don't suppose you'd consider taking this collar off?" Vette asked hopefully. Without breaking stride Shen triggered the device. "Oww!" Vette exclaimed. "You could have just said 'no'. That really hurts…"

"It will come off when I trust you, slave," Shen said over her shoulder.

"Can I trust you?" Vette asked, turning serious in an instant.

Shen considered that for a moment. "You can trust that I am Sith. You belong to me, now, and I don't easily surrender what's mine."

If Vette was comforted by that answer, she didn't respond as they made their way to the shuttle pad.


	5. Siege Perilous

**Chapter Five: Siege Perilous **

_Star System M6559YT_

The swirling, brilliant tunnel of hyperspace snapped into a field of stars as Captain Malavai Quinn brought the _Fury_ back into real space. "We have arrived, my Lord," he said.

Shen, sitting behind Malavai and to the side, didn't respond immediately. She tapped away at the sensor console for a few moments, then sighed and turned to her ship's new captain. "How do I pull up the system profile?" Shen was immensely grateful to Darth Baras for having assigned Captain Quinn to her service after she had concluded her tasks on the war-torn Core world of Balmorra. Not only was Quinn a brilliant officer, a skilled marksman and an accomplished field medic, but he also knew how to captain a starship, an ability Shen needed badly. She had been flattered when Darth Baras had given her a personal ship to aid in her search for the Jedi Padawan whose unique Force abilities threatened her master's spy network, but he seemed to assume she knew how to operate the blasted thing!

Shen had been able to requisition a pilot droid before leaving Dromund Kaas that was able to get them to Balmorra, but she needed to learn how to fly the ship herself, and the droid barely communicated. Quinn, by contrast, was an excellent teacher. With the natural reflexes of a Sith she was already comfortable at the helm, and under Quinn's tutelage she was becoming familiar with the ship's other systems. He leaned over her shoulder and showed her the commands to bring up a map of the system. They had come out of hyperspace close to the asteroid field that was the only thing orbiting the dull red star visible off to port. The system was uninhabited and didn't even have a name, only a numerical designation in an Imperial database.

What it did have, however, was a space station hidden in the thickest section of the asteroid belt that housed a regional hub of Darth Baras' spy network. The _Fury_ had barely broken orbit over Balmorra when Shen's master had called.

"_We are both aware of the urgency of your present task, apprentice, but between your current position and the Smuggler's Moon of Nar Shaddaa, a situation has arisen that requires attention. Our last conversation about Nomen Karr's troublesome apprentice and the danger she poses to my spy network passed through one of my covert Holonet relays. I have reason to believe that the man I placed in charge of the facility housing that relay, one Lieutenant Commander Harve Bolus, may have intercepted that communication. His station has gone dark, and a courier I sent there has not reported back. You must go there, determine what has taken place, and report back to me. If Commander Bolus has proven disloyal, eliminate him and his staff, and purge the station's records."_

_Shen had nodded, kneeling before the holoprojector. "As you command, master."_

Captain Quinn flew the _Fury_ into the asteroid belt with a calm assurance that Shen could feel through the Force. "You've done this before, Captain?" she asked.

"Yes, my Lord. I have navigated asteroid fields denser than this one several times, under fire in two cases."

Satisfied with the answer, Shen settled back in her seat, defocusing on the here and now and letting the Force flow through her. A vague sense of danger in the near future hovered at the edges of her mind, but Shen paid little attention to it. Danger was a part of who she was, now. Tyrin III and Korriban had turned her from a civilian into a warrior. A stint fighting the Empire's enemies on the home front in the jungles of Dromund Kaas and eight months in the trenches of Balmorra had made her a veteran. She had spearheaded the fight against a Republic-backed insurgency in the name of the Empire, while hunting down and killing a spy who had become a liability on behalf of Darth Baras. The armor she wore now was more advanced than the set Lord Syan had provided her, with integrated systems that interfaced with her cybernetics and augmented the strength of her movements without slowing her down. It had been a gift from Balmorra's governor, Darth Lachris, as thanks for services rendered in smashing the rebels and slaying Marshal Cheketa, leader of the resistance and a Republic agent.

On Balmorra, Shen had faced Jedi in combat for the first time, and while she bore scars from the encounters, she was alive, and the Jedi were not. The Togruta who had ambushed her in the Balmorran Arms factory had died quickly, in spite of being backed up by a squad of Republic commandos. The pair of Jedi who attempted to evacuate the Marshal had been more of a challenge. Shen absently rubbed her side, where her old armor had been sliced open by a Jedi lightsaber. She had a cauterized scar underneath to match. They both died, though, the younger Jedi vaporized by one of Vette's grenades and the elder perishing with Shen's crimson blade through his heart. Even the Jedi investigator Nomen Karr had sent to spy on her target had failed, her message and life cut short.

Dozens of insurgents and Republic soldiers had also died by her hand on Balmorra. By the time the campaign reached the Arms Factory itself, the Imperial soldiers looked at her with a mix of awe and fear, and the rebels would sometimes break and run at the sight of the "cyborg Sith". It was a heady feeling, but both Lachris and Baras warned her that she had not yet faced the strongest Jedi, and it was true that those who had fallen to her were no older than she. Shen took the warning to heart.

"My Lord, I am hailing the station on all standard frequencies. They are not responding," Captain Quinn informed Shen, pulling her out of her contemplation.

Glancing out the viewport, Shen noted the density of the belt, mountain sized rocks all around them. "Could they be losing the signal in all this, captain?"

Quinn shook his head. "We've passed several signal boosters mounted on some of the more stable asteroids. They're receiving the messages." The _Fury_swooped around a mountain-sized asteroid and entered the clear zone around the station. Drifting space rock formed a shell around the station with few safe ways in or out. The station was standard Imperial construction, a broad habitation disc bristling with communications equipment, habitation modules, laboratories and more, pierced through the center by a spindle that extended above and below it, studded with massive tractor beam emitters that kept the surrounding asteroids at bay.

"The station's reactors are active at standard levels," Quinn noted, glancing over the sensor readings. "I'm reading multiple life signs. Tractor beams and shields are active. Weapons are not powered." He tapped a command into the console. "There is still no response to our hails. I don't like this, my Lord."

"Neither do I, but I have a job to do. Can we land?"

"The docking bay is sealed, but I'm registering external airlocks. We can breach manually if necessary," Quinn replied.

"Good. Find one you can make a quick getaway from, if necessary. You know what do to if our mission is compromised." Quinn nodded. Shen could feel his dissatisfaction with the plans they had made while in hyperspace, but she knew he would follow orders. Shen stepped back as Quinn began making his approach, and activated the _Fury's_ internal comm system. "Vette, gear up. We're landing soon."

"Yes, master," came the response from the young Twi'lek thief-turned-soldier.

Shen left the cockpit and headed down the short corridor to the common area. Vette arrived moments later. Dromund Kaas and Balmorra had wrought their changes on the Twi'lek girl as surely as they had on Shen. The blasters on her slender hips were new, top of the line Balmorran weapons with the latest technological improvements, compact yet devastatingly accurate and powerful. Her armor was better too, light and form-fitting, with blast plates covering vital areas and woven of a refractive synthetic fabric that resisted both kinetic impact and blaster bolts.

The crude collar that had been grafted to the back of Vette's neck on Korriban was gone. In its place was a far more aesthetically pleasing and practical device that Shen had obtained on Dromund Kaas, a model that was all the rage in Kaas City for the slaves of Sith Lords and the Empire's elite alike. Some of the collars Shen had seen were gilded with precious metals or studded with gems, but she had purchased a more practical version, a ring of shining durasteel, custom built for Vette's measurements and padded on the interior to be worn far more comfortably. Unlike the device from Korriban it contained no punishment measures – it wasn't designed for recalcitrant slaves. The smooth metal of the exterior was marred only with an engraved glyph of Sith design over the throat, a personal sigil Shen had designed for herself with Darth Baras' blessing.

Vette's relief when Shen had removed the old collar in Kaas City on the eve of their departure for Balmorra had turned to anger when she saw the new one. Shen remembered the argument.

"_Are you ever going to trust me?" Vette had demanded. "I've watched your back through every inch of this stinking jungle! I've fought and killed for you! The Mandalorians, the rebel slaves, those psychopaths on Grathan's estate, and that haunted temple. What do I have to do to prove myself to you?"_

"_Vette, calm down," Shen said sternly, holding the new collar in her hands. "I had this made because I trust you. This isn't punishment, it's an honor."_

"_Right," Vette said sarcastically._

"_I'm serious. What we've done here on Dromund Kaas is only a taste of the battles to come. We're going to Balmorra tomorrow. It's a world at war and we're going to be in the thick of it. Times will come where you will need to operate independently from me."_

"_I'm still waiting to hear the part where I need a new collar locked around my neck."_

_Shen sighed. "Most Imperial soldiers and officers have never met a young Twi'lek woman who wasn't an… entertainer. If we are separated and I need you to carry orders or act on your own initiative, you need to have a means to compel obedience from the rank and file, a symbol of authority. This collar will mark you as an extension of my will, and officers on the field will know that to disregard you is to disregard me." Shen cocked her head. "That is, unless you want to have to fend off every soldier who thinks you're a prostitute, and be forced to shoot someone to get their attention every time they dismiss you for being an alien and a woman."_

_Shen sensed Vette's hostility easing as she mulled that over. "Couldn't you just give me an identicard or something?"_

"_This is how it's done among the Sith, Vette. I know you've seen other slaves around Kaas City wearing a collar like this. Did any of them look like menial servants?"_

_Vette blinked, and then nodded slowly. "No, they all seemed… confident. The way they carried themselves surprised me." The Twi'lek girl sighed, looking at the collar. "Do I really have to wear it?"_

"_There is another method of marking you as my chosen," Shen said, taking a holoemitter from her belt and thumbing it to life. It projected a holoimage of a Twi'lek woman, green skinned and older than Vette. Her face, lekku and shoulders were tattooed with intricate, curving black markings, Sith designs and runes. "There are artists here in Kaas City who can replicate this. We could go and get you tattooed tonight, if you like."_

_Vette shuddered, her lekku writhing at the thought of a tattoo needle piercing their sensitive surface. "I guess the collar isn't so bad," she said, swallowing hard. Resigned acceptance flooded Vette's aura in the Force. Sweeping her lekku aside with one hand, Vette tilted her head back, baring her neck._

_Shen slipped the collar around Vette's neck, closing it in the back and running her finger down the seam, triggering the mechanism concealed there. A small amount of nanopaste filled the gaps in the collar, and in seconds fused the moving parts into a seamless metal ring. "There," Shen said with a smile._

_Gingerly, Vette explored her new adornment with her fingers. "Well, it is more comfortable than the old one," she admitted. Then her brow furrowed. "I can't find the catch. How does it come off?"_

"_It doesn't," Shen told her gently._

"_WHAT?" anger and shock rolled off of Vette's Force aura in waves. She tugged at the collar, trying to get her fingers under it, but it was too well fitted._

"_It's a single piece now, and it has integrated countermeasures to prevent forcible removal. All collars of this design do. It even has a cortosis weave under the surface even a lightsaber couldn't cut it. The tracer beacon built into it wouldn't be of much use if anyone could just take the collar off."_

"_Tracer beacon…?" Vette said, eyes wide with alarm._

_Shen nodded. "It has an extensive range. If we're separated on the battlefield I can find you, and if you were to be captured, I could locate you anywhere in the galaxy."_

_From the sick look of realization in Vette's eyes, Shen knew that the Twi'lek girl understood what was unspoken: there was nowhere in the galaxy she could escape from Shen, either. "I thought… if I served you well, did what you asked…" Vette's hands dropped to her sides. "You're never going to let me go, are you?" she asked miserably._

"_No," Shen said with brutal honesty. "You know too much about my master and I, Vette. Our fates are intertwined now." She could see and feel the Twi'lek girl's horror and despair, but as sweet as those emotions were in the Force, they weren't what she needed Vette to feel right now. "What future did you have before we met? You will be my right hand, and I will be powerful. I'm already stronger than any apprentice on this planet. In Baras' service I will become more powerful than any Lord. I will be a Darth in time, and you will rise with me. Is that really so much worse than what you had – a life of petty crime?"_

"_What I had was freedom," Vette said bitterly. "Yes, I was a criminal, but I could decide where to go, what to do. I had friends, family – not an owner!" Vette pressed her hand over her throat, over the sigil on the collar. "I'm a Twi'lek, Shen. I understand what this means. It says 'property'. Not a person, just a commodity to be traded. This is how most of the galaxy sees Twi'leks, as slaves. My mother was a slave. My sister and I were born into it. It was hard getting away from that, so forgive me for not being elated to know I'll be a possession for the rest of my life anyways."_

_Anger, always boiling beneath the surface of Shen's mind, surged through her. With a thought and a gesture Shen slammed Vette back against the wall, pinning her there with brutal force. Shen watched Vette struggle to breathe in the face of that relentless pressure. "No one is free, Vette. You think I'm free? I can use the Force and that means I'm Sith, with all that entails. Even Baras isn't free. He has power and wealth, yes, but to hold onto it he has to spend every waking hour scheming and plotting against enemies on both sides of the battlefield. We all have roles to play and expectations to live up to. You have had more choices than most in your life, and look where those choices lead you: a Korriban prison. Yes, Vette, you are my slave, my 'property', and you will remain so until the day you die. You can grow up, accept that, and make the most of the opportunities that will be presented to you, or you can sulk and whine like a child, in which case your life will be a short one." Taking two steps forward, Shen unhooked her lightsaber from her belt and pressed the emitter into Vette's sternum, angled upward toward her heart. "Serve or die. Make your choice."_

_Vette glared with such hate in her eyes that Shen began to worry she'd have to kill the Twi'lek, but then something gave way inside Vette, a wrenching shift that Shen could feel through the Force. "I'll serve, master," she said in a monotone, looking away from Shen's gaze._

"_Glad to hear it," Shen said, ceasing the Force pressure that pinned Vette to the wall and returning her lightsaber to her belt._

_The first thing Vette did was walk over to the table where Shen had left her holoprojector and flip it on. She gazed at the tattoos on the Twi'lek in the image. "I'll do it," she announced._

_Shen blinked. "What?"_

"_I'll get these tattoos. No one will think I'm too young or too weak if I do this. Besides, if I'm going to be the right hand of a Darth someday, I should look the part." Determination swirled through Vette's Force aura so strongly that Shen just nodded and picked up her comlink, dialing up the frequency of the artisan who had given her the holoimage._

_Chenriss, the tattoo artist, was a female Bith famous in Kaas City for her skill with transcribing Sith iconography onto flesh. Her fees were steep, but Baras rewarded success, and Shen had never performed less than excellently for him. Chenriss' hand was swift and sure, and her tools state of the art, but it still took most of the night and into the morning for her to adorn Vette's head and torso with the markings. Through the night Vette never cried out. Even when Chenriss' laser began inscribing black symbols onto Vette's crimson lekku and Shen could see the tears in Vette's eyes, feel her agony through the Force, she didn't make a sound. Shen could sense her internalizing the pain, hardening herself. By the time the sun rose over Kaas City, a piece of Vette, the child, was dead. The women who looked back at Shen when Chenriss finished her work and departed had cold, focused eyes that gazed forth from a visage made fearsome by the symbols etched onto her face._

"_I'm ready," Vette had said, standing in that Kaas City apartment._

"I'm ready," Vette said, standing by the _Fury's_ airlock. The battlefields of Balmorra had only cemented the changes in Vette. She rarely smiled or laughed now, approaching tasks with a cold intensity.

"Let's go," Shen replied, removing her helmet from its hook on her belt and sliding it over her head. It linked with the collar of her breastplate with a click and hiss, completing a seal with the body armor. In addition to providing protection against attack, the armor could filter out gas, toxins and harmful microbes, and shield her from decompression as long as the bottom layer remained unbroken. Shen lead the way through the umbilical to the airlock with lightsaber in hand. The inner airlock was sealed, but Vette – armed with the control codes Baras had given them – quickly overrode the lockdown and cycled the airlock open.

Waiting for them on the other side of the airlock was a pair of soldiers with blaster rifles trained on the door. Their armor and helmets were white with yellow stripes, and Republic insignia were painted onto their shoulder plates. As Shen took this in, they were seeing a blaster-wielding Twi'lek and a figure in dark armor holding a lightsaber.

"Sith!" one yelled. Both troopers dropped into a crouch behind the waist-high barriers of the airlock's guard post and opened fire. Shen thumbed her blade to life, batting the blaster bolts away. Vette returned fire, making them duck their heads down as her pistol bolts scored the white permacrete barriers. When the storm of blaster bolts abated, Shen reached out with the Force, got a grip on one trooper, and hurled him into the other, propelling herself forward with a Force leap and dispatching them with two quick strokes before they could rise.

"Quinn, there were Republic troopers guarding the airlock," Shen informed her ship's captain. Vette checked that the soldiers were dead, then rifled through their satchels, pocketing some credits and blaster power packs before taking up a position to cover the far door of the entry corridor. "The station is compromised."

"I see. My Lord, I've been conducting more detailed scans of the station. Most of the life signs on board are divided between the habitation area and main station control. If the Republic has occupied the station, they are certainly in possession of the command center."

Vette, who was keyed into the _Fury's_crew comms, opened a flap in her armor behind her shoulder blades and extricated the hood stored there, guiding it over her lekku and head, and sealing it. Shen nodded in approval. If the Republic controlled the station they could vent atmosphere to any section of it. Both her armor and Vette's could seal completely and had emergency oxygen supplies.

"Quinn, can the _Fury's_weapons destroy this station?"

"Not while the shields remain active, my Lord." Malavai didn't protest that the station's Imperial crew might still be alive and on board – he knew the station's data was too important to allow it to remain in enemy hands. "This vessel does not have the armaments to breach them."

"Then we're doing this the hard way. Come on Vette; let's go take back main control."

"Yes, master," The Twi'lek said as they moved deeper into the station.

"Captain, I don't need to tell you to keep your eyes open. Let me know if anything changes."

"Yes, my Lord."

Shen and Vette encountered and dispatched two more Republic patrols as they made their way deeper into the station. The second was a four man squad, and they got a comm message off before Vette gunned down the last one. In less than a minute the emergency blast doors closed and air was pumped out of the section they were in, but by that point they were close to the station's main corridor. Shen cut through two bulkheads with her lightsaber, and they were in the station's core. The turbolifts were locked down, but Baras' control codes forced them back into service. Shen and Vette's turbolift car shot up into the upper spire of the station, where its central command station was located.

When they neared their destination, Shen could sense many minds, hard and aggressive, waiting for them. The turbolift began to slow, and Vette pressed her back to the wall of the lift next to the door, blasters ready. Shen powered up the small, powerful shield generator built into the back of her armor's left forearm plate, priming the power cells, and centered herself in the Force, letting the dark side fill her.

Shen had been one of three acolytes in her class on Korriban to survive the trials and win a master. The other two, a brooding male Sith Pureblood and a pale young human woman with white hair and extensive facial scarring, had both chosen to become Sith marauders, building _shoto_ lightsabers and adopting the offense-oriented two-handed fighting style of the legendary Naga Sadow. Shen, already an expert in single-bladed combat, had chosen the more cautious path, following the teachings of Marka Ragnos and focusing on a deliberate, powerful dueling style coupled with heavy armor, personal shields and defensive Force techniques. Shen held no illusions about what waited on the other side of the turbolift door; she could sense more than a twenty people in the control room. She had already gambled that they wouldn't risk blowing the turbolifts and stranding themselves on the command deck, a theory that seemed to be playing out, since she wasn't dead yet. The Republic probably knew they were facing a Sith, but they didn't know they were facing a _juggernaut_, or they wouldn't have let her get this far.

The turbolift doors slid open. Shen crouched, activated the energy shield, and angled it diagonal to the floor. A storm of blaster fire erupted through the opening, deflecting off of the shield and peppering the lift's roof and back wall. Shen surveyed the room beyond, her visor's sensors feeding to Vette's, who could see everything Shen could. Eight troopers in two ranks of four, fifteen meters back from the turbolift, six firing blasters into the turbolift and two lining up some kind of launch tube on their shoulders. Two pairs of troopers above and to the left and right on the catwalk running along the curving outer edge of the room above the large transparisteel windows looked out into space. Further back, there was a Republic officer on the raised dais that housed the command consoles, along with six more troopers in a defensive cordon.

Shen focused on the heavy weapons troopers first. As they pulled the triggers on their launch tubes, Shen telekinetically wrenched the barrels down to point at the floor. The twin explosions vaporized all eight soldiers, and Shen felt their deaths wash over her through the Force.

"Vette, make some cover!" Shen barked. The Twi'lek tossed a pair of grenades over her shoulder and out the turbolift, which detonated into clouds of thick white smoke. As the incoming blaster fire abated, becoming less accurate, Shen put on a burst of speed and sprinted out into the smoke, adding Force power to a running leap that propelled her out of the smoke cloud and high into the air, up towards the right side of the catwalk and the troopers there. They got off a few hasty shots that Shen deflected with ease before landing on the catwalk between them and bisecting both with a single sweep. Alarmed shouts echoed from below, and blaster bolts began to fly up at Shen from the dais. Sprinting along the catwalk toward the surviving troopers across the room, she batted blaster bolts back at the firing troopers. Nearing the last two on the catwalk, she hurled her lightsaber to eviscerate one, then leapt at the last survivor, and slammed the edge of her personal shield into the join between his helmet and chest armor, the edge of the energy field cutting deep into his neck. Blood spurted everywhere as he died.

The troopers still on the ground started taking fire as Vette moved out of the elevator, staying in the smoke cloud and using the sensor data from Shen's visor to target the troopers on the dais, her blasters felling one after another. Once they were distracted, Shen leapt from the catwalk and landed in their midst, pushing down and outward with the Force, creating a kinetic blast wave that threw the survivors away from her like rag dolls. In seconds she and Vette had finished them off.

"Captain, we have the command center."

"Yes, my Lord. Republic chatter is growing increasingly frantic. I believe they are sending reinforcements to your location." Shen glanced at the turbolifts. Sure enough, they showed a car ascending.

"Captain, talk Vette through purging the station's databanks and shutting down the reactors. I'll delay our new arrivals." Shen stalked over to the second turbolift, where the Republic reinforcements were ascending. Forcing the door open with a gesture, she glanced down at the rapidly rising turbolift car. When it drew near Shen cut the shaft's main power conduit with her lightsaber blade. The car ground to a halt, sparks flying as the four emergency brakes deployed. Hopping down to land on the top of the stopped car, Shen landed with a_thud_, absorbing the impact with her knees and the Force. Alarmed shouts came from within, but she ignored them, slicing through all four of the car's brake pads and then leaping back up to the open door. Freed from contact with the edges of the shaft, the turbolift car plummeted "down", and Shen could hear fading screams as the troopers fell to their deaths.

"Reinforcements are handled, Captain," Shen said. Vette, done with the computers, joined her by the turbolifts.

"My Lord, Republic ships have emerged from the belt, a frigate and two fighters. I cannot remain on station." Moments later Shen saw the _Fury_ fly past the command center viewports, a pair of Republic Talon fighters on its tail. "They're deploying a shuttle as well, my Lord. It's headed for the station."

"Lose them in the belt, Captain. Get clear and transmit the situation to the sector fleet. Vette and I will deal with the shuttle's passengers and rendezvous with you."

"Yes, my Lord," Quinn replied, the_Fury_ vanishing between a pair of tumbling asteroids.

Shen and Vette rode the surviving turbolift back down to the main ring of the station. They were headed for the docking bay when Shen felt the presence on the approaching shuttle. Rarely could she sense individual minds so far away, but this one burned with brilliant strength, and a foul flavor that overflowed with calm and righteous certainty. Shen had felt flickers of such a mind, prior to killing their bearers, but never so strongly. The only Force presence this overwhelming she had ever felt was in the presence of her master, Darth Baras. _There's a powerful Jedi on that shuttle. Maybe even a Master_, Shen realized, stomach sinking. She debated retreating back into the station, but in the shadows of the Jedi's presence she could sense dozens more soldiers. They'd find her, and if she could sense the Jedi, he or she could probably feel Shen's presence as well.

"Vette, there's a strong Jedi on that shuttle. I need you to keep the soldiers busy; it's going to take everything I have to defeat this one."

"Understood, master. I guess I'm lucky you're a strong Sith," Vette replied.

When they entered the docking bay, though, Shen came to a halt, surprised. The shuttle's ramp was up, and she could sense the troopers, still inside. Between her and the shuttle was a single figure, a petite green-skinned Miralian woman dressed in the signature brown robes of the Jedi Order. Her hair was silver-white, and her face, tattooed with intricate geometric tattoos, was lined with age. Standing in the Jedi's presence, Shen could feel the noxious Force power of the light pouring off of the old woman in waves, her presence hard and resolute, filled with righteous disdain. Shen's grip tightened around the hilt of her lightsaber reflexively.

The Miralian's gray eyes locked onto Shen and Vette. "So you're the Sith that murdered the men stationed here. Surrender, now."

"Find some cover and shoot her in the back once I've engaged her," Shen commanded Vette over her internal comm, then began circling around the Miralian, lightsaber raised in a guard. "You're overconfident, Jedi. It will be your undoing," Shen said through her helmet's external speakers as Vette dashed for a pile of supplies and crates that would provide her cover.

"You've murdered too many young men and women already, Sith. I'll not give you more lives to take, and you're not strong enough to defeat me," the Jedi declared arrogantly. Then she waved her hand at Vette, and before Shen could intercede, the Twi'lek girl was hurled into the wall with brutal force. Shen could hear bones break from the impact, and Vette collapsed to the floor with a shriek then passed out. "Good riddance." The Miralian Jedi drew her lightsaber, its blade a pale green. "I am Jedi Master Grendil Torbaane. You must sense that you can't defeat me, Sith. Surrender now and I won't have to hurt you."

"You've already violated the peace treaty and launched a sneak attack against an Imperial installation, so you'll forgive me if I don't take your word for that." Shen countered.

Master Torbaane shook her head pityingly. "Is that what you think happened here, girl? I'm afraid the men you undoubtedly came to silence are quite safe under my care. They have petitioned the Republic for asylum, and we are granting it."

"Then they need to die, and you need to die with them," Shen snarled. Bolstered by anger at the confirmation of Commander Bolus' betrayal, Shen charged at Master Torbaane, forgoing an aerial leap out of wariness of the Jedi's prodigious telekinetic strength. Sure enough, the Miralian did hurl a wave of telekinetic force at Shen, so strong that she was barely able to shunt it aside. Shen swung at Torbaane with a powerful overhead slash, and the smaller woman met the blow with her blade, not giving an inch. Then she spun, blindingly fast, planting a kick in Shen's side that hurt even through the armor, sending her staggering away, barely parrying a thrust by the green blade that would have skewered her thigh. Shen danced back, weaving a defensive basket or red light around herself, but the Jedi wouldn't give her any time to recover. The green blade licked at her, fast as a serpent's strike, interspersed with telekinetic blows that battered Shen when she wasn't able to push them away. Twice, her shield generator's reactive algorithms saved her from crippling injury, powering up to deflect lightsaber strikes. Then a slash that got inside her guard sliced the generator from her armor, searing the prosthetic arm underneath.

Back and forth they danced, green blade meeting red. Shen could barely keep the Jedi Master's blade from her vitals, and occasional stinging strikes scored or melted her armor, piercing through to inflict shallow, painful cuts on her arms and legs. Then after a missed parry that resulted in only a shallow slice across her ribs instead of a deeper cut, Shen realized that the Jedi was holding back; refraining from a killing blow, and fear began to gnaw away at her rage. "Get up, Vette," Shen commanded through her internal comms. "Get up, damn you!"

Even though Master Torbaane couldn't hear her she smiled, amusement and scorn rippling through her aura. "Your kind is always alone in the end, Sith." The Jedi swung a powerful blow that knocked Shen's blade out of position. Her hand, suddenly radiant, slammed into Shen's solar plexus, and she was airborne, a brief flight that ended in a jarring impact against the side of a durasteel shipping crate, its surface deforming from the blow. Shen blacked out for a moment, and when her vision returned she was lying on the deck, the green and red lightsabers both in Master Torbaane's hands, the blades crossed over her neck and the Jedi's knee on her chest. "Go ahead and move, Sith. Give me an excuse." Shen was surprised to sense not only arrogance and disdain, but real hate from the Jedi, emotions she had been taught the monastic light siders abstained from.

Shen could see the deadly certainty in the old Miralian's eyes and the tension in her arms, and knew that she was an instant away from death. Rage clawed at her, demanding blood and pain, but she forced it down, making her muscles relax. Master Torbaane smirked at her, and then spoke into the comlink clipped to the collar of her robes. "Go ahead and disembark, sergeant. Bring the suppression kit."

The ramp to the shuttle lowered, and Republic troopers came spilling out, securing the bay and spilling deeper into the station. Shen could see a pair disarming Vette and carrying her back onto the shuttle. Another group lead by an older, hard-faced human with the rank insignia of a sergeant approached Shen. "That's a shame, Master Torbaane. I was hoping this one was dead already," he growled. The sergeant pressed his hand to the comm in his helmet, and then grimaced. "No response from Zurek company so far. My men are finding bodies all over. Mostly in pieces," he added, glaring at Shen

Shen sensed the Jedi's sadness at the news. "They're all dead, Republic lackey," Shen taunted. "You'll join them soon enough."

She could feel the anger of the troopers boil over. The sergeant restrained himself, but one of the troopers with him lost his temper, kicking Shen in the ribs hard enough to crack her scored armor, but she smiled behind her mask.

"That's enough, trooper," Torbaane said reproachfully. "Prepare her for transport." Shen seethed with rage as the soldiers approached her carefully, closing heavy shackles around her wrists and ankles, thick chains of a dull gray metal looped around her waist and connecting the wrist and ankle restraints. They removed her helmet as well. Then they dragged her to her feet and forced her head down. One of the troopers pressed a strip of something cold and metallic to the back of her neck. It grew hot for a moment, and stung her skin fiercely. When the trooper let go, it stayed on, adhering to her skin over her brain stem. Then the trooper behind her pulled a bag of a dense black cloth over Shen's head, blinding her and cinching it tight around her neck.

When the troopers hauled her to her feet, the chain between her ankles was short enough that Shen could barely walk, and a pair of troopers grabbed her arms and rybet-marched her onto the shuttle. She was shoved into a drop seat. Shen could hear the sergeant, his squad and Master Torbaane joined them. The hum of the shuttle's engines grew louder as they lifted off.

_This isn't good…_ Shen reflected morosely. The shuttle landed, and she was hauled up out of her seat by the troopers and down the ramp of the shuttle. Through the Force, Shen could feel the surprise followed by palpable hatred and malicious glee from the Republic soldiers and crew in the hangar bay when they saw Shen marched out of the shuttle in chains. Cheers for the Jedi Master trailing behind her were interspersed with taunts and jeers at her.

She could sense beings all around her. Someone's foot slipped in front of hers, and blind and chained, she fell, the soldiers letting her land painfully on the deck. Enraged, Shen summoned the Force, preparing to lash out at her captors. A high-pitched humming from device on her neck and the shackles on her wrists was Shen's only warning before every muscle in her body seized, her vision whiting out for a moment and pain cascading through her body. The pain faded quickly, but blood dripped from her nose, and her muscles were weak enough that the troopers had to pick her up off the ground, two of them half-carrying, half-dragging her between them. When she could hear again renewed jeers and laughter assaulted her. "I wouldn't try that again, Sith," Master Torbaane murmured with amusement from somewhere nearby. "The neural disruptors in those shackles discharge more strongly each time they're triggered by an attempt to use the Force. The next one will be far more unpleasant."

Shen's escort dragged her into a turbolift, the hanger noise fading. A short ride later, they emerged in what Shen assumed was the detention level, and they took her deep inside. "This cell is specially designed for Force sensitive prisoners, Sith," Master Torbaane informed her when they stopped. "You couldn't get out even if you weren't in those restraints." The troopers yanked the bag off of her head, letting her see a small cell decorated only with a cot and refresher. They let go of Shen and she fell to the floor, her muscles still weak and afflicted with spasms from the neural disruptor. Their footsteps trailed away, leaving Shen alone with the Miralian Jedi. "Oh, and don't try to remove that sensor on your neck. You'd only injure yourself, and those shackles will shock you unconscious if you succeed. I'll be back soon." Then she left, the door slamming shut behind her.

When the effects of the neural shock faded, Shen sat up, back against the wall. Looking around the cell, she sighed – then started laughing as the absurdity of it all struck her. All her suffering and all her successes since Tyrin III, and here she was right back in a detention cell. _I'm sure someone finds this funny,_ she thought to herself.


	6. Light and Darkness

**Chapter Six: Light and Darkness**

_Undaunted – Republic Frigate_

True to her word, Master Torbaane did return a few hours later, with prison guards who took Shen to the ship's med center. There, her armor was de-integrated from her cybernetics and removed. They also took her prosthetic arm and leg, replacing them with simple but functional mechanical limbs of their own, bare metal of a golden hue with no synthflesh covering. Finally they scanned her remaining implants in detail, satisfying themselves that none were dangerous before dressing her in a gray prison jumpsuit and returning her to her cell. This time when the guards left, Master Torbaane stayed. Shen expected the Jedi to start interrogating her, but the aged Miralian only leaned against the wall by the door, regarding her thoughtfully. "You fought well for one so young, I'll give you that. You're strong and disciplined for an apprentice. You might have even become a true terror someday," Torbaane said.

"We're a long way from Republic space, Jedi. Don't be too sure you've won," Shen warned.

Torbaane shook her head. "We're getting closer with every hour, and no one's going to save you. Our fighters destroyed your ship before it escaped the asteroid belt. Even if someone was looking for you, you don't have any transmitters left in that machine-riddled body of yours. We've already vaporized your arm and leg, so the beacons you hid in them are gone. Since the tracer unit in the collar your Twi'lek wears doesn't work in hyperspace, I'm afraid you're out of luck." In spite of her dignified, sanctimonious nature, Shen noted that the old Jedi had no problem looking smug.

Dismay filled Shen, and she couldn't keep it from creeping into her Force aura. She didn't want to accept that the Jedi was telling the truth about Quinn, but she couldn't sense any falsehood in Torbaane's words. The beacons in her prosthetics had been well hidden in innocuous systems, and without them anyone would have a hard time finding her.

The Jedi left her alone then, to contemplate her fate. Shen waited until she couldn't sense Torbaane anymore and then used the tip of her tongue to tap a specific pattern into the soft tissue below her teeth, which hummed for a moment as the implant – concealed beneath the dense bone of her reconstructed jaw and layers of metal – activated. If Quinn was dead it was probably a futile gesture, but Shen didn't have anything to lose by trying. "I really hope that bitch was lying and you're still alive, Quinn," she whispered to herself.

The next time the door to the cell opened was in the middle of the night cycle. Shen woke as she was hauled from the cot where she slept, the bag thrown over her head again, and dragged out of the cell by a pair of troopers. Despite her irritation, Shen refrained from comment, and her captors remained silent as well. She was hustled into a turbolift that fell for a while before stopping. The new corridor she was escorted down was narrow, judging by the echoes, and she could hear fluids dripping, the hiss of gas under pressure, all overlaid by a steady humming roar of the ship's generators that grew louder as they proceeded. The background noise was intense enough that at first Shen didn't hear the sounds from ahead of her: harsh laughter, a scream of pain, the dull _thud_ of plasteel striking flesh. Shen's escorts pulled her into a room off of the hallway, and then yanked the bag off of her head, giving Shen her first good look at them.

The pair of troopers who had brought her were a tall male Cathar with a shaved head and a blonde human woman with a lovely yet severe face who wouldn't have looked out of place on the streets of Kaas City. Both wore the same unit patch on their armor, and both exuded a distinct sense of unease in the Force, though it was outweighed by a respect and admiration for one of the three occupants of the room they had just entered; a stout Miralian woman in battle-scarred armor with the same unit patch and a rank insignia of lieutenant. Leaning against the wall behind her cleaning his nails with the tip of a deactivated vibroblade was a tall gaunt man in an Imperial uniform who matched Darth Baras' description of Harve Bolus. The room's last occupant was Vette, dressed in a gray jumpsuit identical to Shen's, with a cast on her left leg and bindings on her ribs where Torbaane's Force throw had broken her bones. She was shackled to a chair that sat below the darkened room's only light fixture. Shen could sense Vette's pain in the Force, both from Torbaane's attack, and from a number of minor wounds that she hadn't had when they arrived on the ship. There were black bruises all over her, one of her eyes was swollen almost shut, and spots of blood glistened on her skin from a multitude of cuts and abrasions.

As Shen watched, the Miralian lieutenant punched Vette in the side near her broken ribs, eliciting a shriek of pain from the Twi'lek girl. Tears streamed down her face, and when she looked up and saw Shen, she sobbed with relief. "Please, master, tell her I don't know anything else! She won't believe me!"

The Miralian trooper turned to Shen, a sadistic grin cutting across her face. "Well if it isn't another of the Emperor's boot-licking toadies! Chains are a good look for you, Sith." Shen was surprised by what she sensed from the Republic soldier. The lieutenant's Force aura was a menacing swirl of malice and hate. The Miralian wasn't Force sensitive, but her aura was blacker than any Shen had sensed on someone other than a fellow Sith. Shen was taller than the green-skinned trooper but estimated that they probably massed about the same, and when the lieutenant grabbed the front of Shen's jumpsuit, she swung her around with surprising strength, slamming Shen into the wall with jarring force. "What's the story, Sith? Is your pet here loyal or just a masochist? A Twi'lek with those marks all over her, I've been going with masochist, but it doesn't feel like she's having as much fun as I am."

Shen glanced at Vette indifferently, then back at the Miralian. "I don't give much thought to the sexual predilections of my property. Maybe you should just ask her."

Shen saw the lieutenant's elbow flying at her face and couldn't avoid it, so she twisted her head to diminish the impact of the hit, which still sliced her cheek and rattled her teeth. "Maybe I'll do that, 'Shen'," the Miralian said with a grin. "She gave us a name, at least. I'm Lieutenant Shorlee of Havoc Squad, by the way. These are my subordinates Aric and Elara. You probably know Commander Bolus."

"The walking dead man? Yes, I know who he is," Shen replied, gaze settling on Harve, who flinched, then scowled when he realized it and pointed his knife at her.

"Your threats aren't convincing wearing those bracelets, Sith. I hear Master Torbaane wiped the deck with you," he shot back with an oily smirk.

Shen glanced back at Shorlee. "Is there a point to all this?"

"Not really. If you feel like volunteering any information that's a bonus, but mostly we're just blowing off steam here," Shorlee said casually. Pushing Shen down into the room's other chair, reinforced and bolted to the floor like the one Vette was in, Shorlee gestured at Aric and Elara. The pair of troopers looped Shen's restraints around the chair, chaining her ankles to the legs and re-shackling her arms behind the chair's back, wrenching her shoulders awkwardly. Then they left, the door hissing shut behind them. "From what I hear about Sith, you may enjoy this almost as much as I do," Shorlee told Shen and then turned back to Vette, cracking her knuckles.

Terror and despair mixed with pain in Vette's aura as Shorlee approached her. "Please, I swear I don't know anything else!"

"Oh, I believe you, pet," Shorlee said with mock sympathy. "Now I'm just going to hurt you until your owner starts sharing information. Or until you die. Whichever comes first." Vette's stare of horrified disbelief lasted until Shorlee's armored fist impacted her face head-on. Shen heard the snap of cartilage followed by a shriek of pain as the Twi'lek's nose broke. Shorlee followed that up with a backhanded blow to Vette's cheek and a shot to her gut that knocked the wind out of her. Vette doubled over in agony as far as her restraints would allow, blood dripping from her nose onto the floor. She got her breath back just in time to scream again as Shorlee gripped one of Vette's lekku in a gauntleted hand and squeezed. Tormented cries escaped the Twi'lek girl with each breath as the trooper squeezed harder, abusing the sensitive head-tail.

Vette sagged in her restraints when Shorlee let go, sobbing. "Please, masther, _helb me,_" she pleaded, her voice nasal and broken.

Shorlee gripped Vette's lekku again and wrenched her head up to look at Shen with teary eyes. "I don't think she cares what happens to you, pet. I'm more than willing to continue testing the theory, though." The Miralian trooper took a black coil of woven fibercord from a belt pouch, wrapped a few loops of it around each hand, then flipped it over Vette's head, and drew the cord tight until it dug into the red flesh of the Twi'lek girl's neck.

Vette's eyes bulged. She made horrible choking noises as she tried to breathe, thrashing desperately against the binders, heedless of the sharp metal edges of the restraints cutting into her skin. Shorlee just planted a knee in the back of the chair and drew the garrote tighter, ignoring her victim's struggles. Bolus abandoned his cuticle cleaning and watched Vette with interest as the young alien was strangled, twisted glee permeating his aura. By contrast, Shorlee was dark and calm inside. She could have been cleaning her blaster for all the reaction she seemed to be having to choking a helpless prisoner.

Vette's face started turning purple, a color Shen guessed to be unhealthy even for a red-skinned Twi'lek, and her eyes, pleading silently with Shen, were becoming bloodshot. As the alien girl's struggles started to grow weaker, Shen understood that this wasn't a bluff; Shorlee didn't care if Vette died. It surprised her, going against everything she had been told about how weak and foolishly honorable the Empire's enemies were. This was how a Sith would interrogate prisoners. Didn't the smugly self-righteous Republic believe itself too noble for such tactics?

"What do you want to know?" Shen asked, finally breaking her silence. If this soldier acted like an Imperial interrogator, Shen needed to deal with her like one.

Shorlee loosened her hold, letting Vette cough and gasp for air. "The commander here offered us all sorts of interesting intel from some Sith's spy network that the exalted Jedi Master was excited about, but I'm more interested in actionable military intelligence that he's a bit short on." Bolus was on the verge of protesting, but a glare from Shorlee silenced him. "Tell me about the disposition of Imperial forces in this sector. I want fleet makeup and locations, garrison placements, patrol routes."

"What makes you think I know any of that? I'm a Sith, not a Moff."

Shorlee shrugged, and drew the cord tight, starving Vette of air once more. "Maybe you don't. If neither of you knows anything useful, then my time here was wasted, and when people waste my time they tend to wind up dead. You, I can't kill; the Jedi reserve that privilege for themselves. But your pet here? She'll die unless you give me something to work with."

"You said it yourself: why should I care what happens to her? She's just a slave," Shen said, trying to ignore Vette's terror and pain fluttering at the edges of her mind while the Twi'lek's face started changing color again.

"Maybe you don't. In that case, the galaxy will be down one Twi'lek race traitor in a minute," Shorlee replied calmly.

Watching her slave slowly suffocate, Shen found herself facing another unpleasant choice. By all rights, she shouldn't care. As Shorlee said, the Jedi would decide her fate later. She still had time to escape, or come to an understanding with her captors. If she divulged classified information to the Republic, though, she could be in very real trouble with Baras or even some of the more influential Moffs even if she did find a way to free herself. A "good" Sith would sit and watch Vette die and not care or bat an eyelash. _But is that the wise path or just the easy one?_ Shen asked herself, and realized she already knew the answer. _I really hope I don't regret this…_

Shen sighed. "All right. I don't know how you think it's going to help you, but the forces closest to Commander Bolus' station are the 73rd Assault Fleet, based out of the Chendur II sector base. As of yesterday its compliment was two _Leviathan_-class cruisers, the _Yellow Fang_ and _Viper's Grin_, supported by the fighter carrier _Mynock Nest_ and the frigates _Burning Lance_ and _Rapid Spear._ They're commanded by…"

Shorlee looked surprised for a moment before letting Vette breathe. She put the garrote cord back in her pouch and started taking down notes on her datapad. Vette, eyes watering, looked at Shen with surprised gratitude as she listed off current force deployments for a sizeable chunk of the sector. "That's all I had time to get up to speed on," Shen told Shorlee when she was done.

"Okay. Well, that's… useful," Shorlee conceded. "I'm surprised, Sith. I didn't think you cared about your toys that much."

"Nor did I. You're full of surprises, girl," came a quiet, silky voice from behind Shen. Twisting her head around, Shen was shocked to see Grendil Torbaane leaning against the wall in the shadows behind her. She hadn't sensed the Jedi's presence, even though the old Miralian was just meters from her! As she watched, Torbaane stepped forward, and her Force presence unfolded from nothingness to shine in the Force.

"How long have you been here?" Shen couldn't stop herself from asking.

"Long enough," the Jedi Master answered with a smile.

Shen looked at poor Vette, then back at the Jedi in disbelief. "And you were just going to let your subordinate murder a prisoner?"

"How my daughter conducts interrogations is of little concern to me. She gets results, as you can attest."

Shen blinked, the surprises just crashing down one after another. "Daughter?" Shorlee scowled at Master Torbaane, who laughed, shaking her head.

"Poor Sith. You don't know anything about the real galaxy, do you?" Torbaane said mockingly. "Let me guess. Your master told you that all Jedi are celibate monks who rescue nexu cubs and never do what's effective, only what's noble. Well an hour ago you probably believed that a Republic trooper wouldn't make you watch while she tortured your pet Twi'lek, and you were wrong there, weren't you?" Pacing around to stand beside Shorlee, Grendil put her hand on the younger Miralian's shoulder. "I've had lovers Sith, possibly more than you, and I have a delightful, if Force-blind daughter." The younger Miralian shrugged Grendil's hand off her shoulder. "She probably told you her name is Shorlee, didn't she? My dear, that Basic bastardization is an insult. Her name is Chirli Torbaane."

Master Torbaane walked behind Shen. "Here's something else you wouldn't expect a Jedi to do, little Sith. It will hurt less if you don't fight it."

Shen only had to wonder what Torbaane was talking about for a moment before she felt it. The Jedi's hard, brilliant aura _unfolded_ like the petals of a blooming flower, revealing a hidden core that was suffused with enough cruelty and jagged darkness to put most Sith to shame. Grendil gripped the sides of Shen's head in her hands, and those sharp edges cut into Shen's mind, probing. Shen jerked in surprise. The pain inside her skull quickly escalated as the Jedi bored deeper into her memories. "Get out of my head, Jedi," Shen said through gritted teeth.

Torbaane didn't answer, digging further. Shackled with the neural disruptors, Shen couldn't actively resist Torbaane's intrusion, but Baras had taught her other methods of foiling mental probes. Letting her eyes drift shut, Shen centered herself in the Force, letting the dark side flow through her passively, pushing past the pain and entering a light meditative state, empty of memory, containing only contemplation of the Force. Shen envisioned her mind as a smooth whole, a shell without cracks or weakness, and so it became.

The jagged edges of Torbaane's probes scrabbled away at the shell, becoming more forceful. Shen grunted with pain. It still hurt, but Torbaane couldn't get any deeper, couldn't reach her memories. "You are gifted, little Sith. But that won't help you," Torbaane whispered in her ear. "Chirli, be a dear and cut off the tip of one of that Twi'lek's lekku," she instructed in a more normal voice.

Shorlee glared at her mother but obeyed, stretching one of Vette's lekku out on the table behind her and extending a vibroblade from her gauntlet, powering it on with a hum. "What? No! Please, stop!" Vette pleaded. Then her eyes went wide and she let out an ear-piercing scream as Shorlee sliced off the first centimeter of her left lekku.

Shen's eyes snapped open in surprise, and Grendil took advantage of her momentary loss of concentration to dig deeper into her mind. "Every time you resist me your pet loses a little more flesh," Torbaane said.

Shorlee's face brightened. "Oh, please fight her. I've never diced a Twi'lek's head-tail like a spice loaf while it was still attached to their head." The trooper lightly nicked the skin of the lekku, drawing another shriek from Vette.

Grimacing, Shen saw the trap. Shorlee's interrogation had been a window dressing for Grendil to determine how much Shen cared about Vette. Bracing herself, Shen relaxed her mental defenses. Breath hissed through her teeth as the pain came back worse than ever, Torbaane's cold, sharp mental touch burrowing into her mind with renewed vigor. Shen felt nauseous as the Jedi sifted through her memories. "Baras. So that old fool is still alive," Torbaane said absently. "Syan… haven't heard that name before." The Jedi paused, lingering in Shen's memories of Tyrin III. "Oh, that's priceless," she murmured, laughing harshly. "This little morsel was a teacher; she tended other people's snot-nosed brats. None of her own, though. Wanted one desperately, but her husband died and the Sith came to claim her." Shen could feel tears in her eyes. The Jedi had no right to her innermost thoughts and regrets! Hate surged through Shen at Grendil's casual violation of her mind, and she pushed back, desperate to have the Jedi out of her head. The pain was too great, though, and her thoughts in too much disarray. She couldn't find her center to make her mind a fortress again.

"You're not getting rid of me now, little Sith. But just for that…" The Jedi surged the Force through all the shark hooks and talons she had sunk into Shen's memory of her life before the Sith, and her head exploded with pain. She screamed in agony, blacking out for she knew not how long. When she could think again through the pain, Grendil's poison touch had moved on to new memories. Where she had been, where she had thrust her will into Shen's memories and attacked them…

Everything was gone. Shen could remember that she had been married, but she couldn't picture his face anymore. Couldn't remember the day they met, or the day they were married, or the first time they made love. She couldn't recall what foods he liked when she cooked them, or which local sporting teams he had favored. It was like someone told her she had a husband; it was a few sparse facts, nothing more. With mounting horror, Shen realized her memories of her mother and brother were similarly ravaged. She couldn't recall her mother's voice or growing up with a sibling. "What did you do to me?" Shen said hoarsely.

"This ability doesn't just retrieve memories, little Sith; it destroys them," Grendil hissed as she pillaged Shen's more recent memories. "It's a technique few Jedi or Sith have mastered. When I'm done with you, you'll be a vegetable."

"No… no!" Shen cried. Everything from before the Sith, from when she had been happy, was gone, torn and broken, the bits that remained divorced from emotion, from meaning. Shen felt tears streaming down her face and didn't care. It was all gone!

"Oh, stop that, you're just embarrassing yourself," Grendil said irritably. "Here, relive this for a while as you drift into oblivion." The Jedi's will attacked Shen's mind again, and the room around her faded away. She drifted into an endless gray mist that lasted for either a moment or an eternity before she was yanked into a memory. Not the happy ones Grendil has stolen, but the painful ones she had left behind. Shen was back in the high-gravity cell, being tortured for not understanding that a Sith killed without hesitation to survive. She was in the High Court of Tyrin III, lost in her rage, butchering one chained prisoner after another. She was in the Citadel, pushing the button and watching children die by her hand. She relived the horrors of the last year over and over; trapped in the mental prison Grendil had built for her while the dark Jedi pillaged her memories.

When the forced reminiscence finally faded, movement brought Shen back to the present. She was blindfolded again, being carried. Her head rang like a bell, agony washing through her skull in waves, white starbursts exploding behind her eyes. Her groan of pain was rewarded with an armored knee in the side. "Quiet, Sith. It's better than you deserve." The voice was male, unfamiliar to Shen.

The trip ended back at her cell, where they dropped her on the floor and left, the door hissing shut. With her hands still shackled behind her and her ankles chained she couldn't move much, or even get the blindfold off, and her whole body felt numb and weak, a side effect of Grendil's mind invasion, she assumed. Shen didn't know how long she had lay there before she heard movement. The door hissed open, a trooper's voice said, "Get in there and keep quiet."

The door closed. Someone pulled Shen into a sitting position against the wall and tugged the black bag off of her head. It was Vette, looking worse for the wear. Her face was puffy and bruised, her nose splinted and a bandage around the lekku that had lost its tip, in addition to her broken arm and ribs. She wasn't otherwise restrained, though. "Hey," she said softly. "Are you still in there?"

It was a pertinent question. Slowly, Shen took stock of the contents of her mind. The details of her life on Tyrin III before the accident were still reduced to a few faded, pale scraps. All that remained with clarity was her training under Lord Syan. Elsewhere in her memory there were holes scattered around. Pieces of Korriban and Balmorra were gone. The times she had been content or pleased were missing. All that was left was the killing, the pain of wounds taken, the blood and noise and chaos of war.

When Shen didn't answer right away, Vette sat back. "I wish I understood what that Jedi did to you. You were screaming for a while, then nothing. When she stopped, you just… sat there. I'm used to seeing anger or malice or amusement or… at least indifference in your eyes. Seeing nothing there is creepy, so please come back." Vette looked around the room, shivering in the cool air. "I never thought I'd miss that prison on Korriban you found me in, but at least it was warm there. And I'll take the casual indifference of the overseers over that psycho Miralian any day." Discouraged, the Twi'lek girl rested her face on her knees with a sigh.

Shen heard Vette, but put it aside. She was more concerned with what was left in her ravaged mind. The killing… she was good at it. She tried to remember why she had ever hesitated to slay an enemy, but Torbaane must have taken that from her, because she couldn't. Focusing on Vette, Shen felt anger boil up through her. It was good, it focused her mind, and she followed that outrage back to its source. It was the Twi'lek girl's injuries. Vette was her possession, her tool, and the lackeys of the Republic had no right to injure her in such a manner.

"Kill…" Shen whispered, coughing. Vette looked up, expression hopeful. "I'll kill them all."

"Big talk," Vette said with a weak laugh. "But it's nice to hear you say it." Moving closer to Shen, she glanced at her master's restraints. "These look pretty secure, but maybe I can get them off."

Shen was about the tell Vette to wait until the next night cycle, when they would be less likely to be watched, when the implant in her jaw hummed. Even as her eyes widened in surprise, her danger sense shrieked at her through the Force. "Vette, get down!" she yelled, going prone and rolling under the cot herself.

Vette barely had time to flatten herself on the deck when the _Undaunted_ shook with incredible force. They could feel as well as hear the explosion that rocked the Republic frigate. The lights went out, and the artificial gravity cut out for a few seconds, letting them both drift in the dark for a moment before red emergency lighting came back on and they dropped back to the deck.

"What was that?" Vette cried.

"It felt like a turbolaser strike," Shen replied.

Vette's eyes went wide. "Oh, that's bad," she said. "If the Empire destroys this ship…"

Shen shook her head. "They won't. Quinn's out there." The ship rocked again, throwing them both into a wall. "That first explosion was probably the ship's engines."

"Quinn's here? How do you… they were bragging that they got all of your beacons!" Vette exclaimed.

Shen smiled thinly. "They got the obvious ones. The passive transponder in my face plates, they missed." Laser hits shook the _Undaunted_ for less than a minute before they stopped. For several minutes the only sounds they heard were the ship's alarms. Then, faintly, they heard blaster fire. The sounds moved closer, and then tapered off.

The door hissed open, and Shen relaxed at the familiar Force presence even before she saw Captain Quinn's face. "My Lord! Thank goodness." He holstered his blaster, and Shen saw a squad of Imperial troopers outside as Quinn entered the cell, using the code key had appropriated from the guards to remove Shen's restraints.

She got to her feet, ignoring her cramped limbs. "You're a life saver, Captain. I worried you were dead."

"The fighters managed to damage the _Fury_, but I eluded them and made my way back to the sector fleet." Quinn explained, walking with her as they left the cell and headed for the turbolift. There were Republic corpses in the corridor, and disarmed captives under guard. Several turned pale when they saw Shen walking free. "Thanks to a course extrapolation from your transponder, the _Viper's Grin_ was able to ambush the _Undaunted_ as it emerged from hyperspace." Quinn paused, listening to the comlink in his ear. "Our marines are reporting full control of the vessel. Lord Cineratus engaged and defeated a Jedi shortly after we boarded; after that most resistance collapsed."

Shen frowned. "A Miralian Jedi?"

Quinn nodded. "I witnessed the fight; it was quite a duel."

Shen clenched her fist. "I was half hoping to kill that one myself, but dead is dead." She exchanged a glance with Vette, who nodded but mostly looked relieved.

When they emerged in the docking bay the scent of smoke and blood filled the air. The heaviest fighting had taken place here. Several Imperial shuttles rested near the magcon field, and Republic prisoners were being loaded into one. Imperial troops held the area. Shen was drawn over to the dark side presence of a fellow Sith who could only be Cineratus. He turned to them as Shen approached. Cineratus was an urbane gray-haired human with a lined face, black discolorations around his yellow eyes evidence of extended use of the dark side. He wore traditional Sith robes and at his hip was a double-bladed lightsaber, the hallmark of a Sith assassin. A few meters away from him lay the body of Master Torbaane, her sightless eyes staring at the ceiling. Her right arm was severed, and her neck sliced halfway through. Shen shivered at the sight.

"Ah, you must be Darth Baras' apprentice," Cineratus said in a cultured voice. "Your Captain here spoke highly of you, and if you're still sane you must be tough, indeed." The last was almost a question.

"A little worse for the wear, my Lord, but still intact," Shen said with a bow. "I owe you a great deal for the rescue."

Cineratus waved his hand dismissively. "I may call on you at a future date, young apprentice, but your debt is small." He gazed down at Torbaane's corpse with self-satisfaction oozing from his aura. "In truth, I've been hunting this ship and this Jedi for the last few months. The bounty the Dark Council has offered for her head is more than compensation for my trouble. I was fortunate to be at the sector base when your Captain's distress call came in."

Shen blinked. "My Lord?"

Cineratus smiled. "Master Grendil Torbaane and her covert operations unit based off of this ship have been known to us for some time, apprentice. Your Captain's report caught my interest, as it was similar to attacks Master Torbaane conducted in the past, so I chose to accompany the _Viper's Grin_. You are the sixth Sith to fall into her hands since she started operating in Imperial space two years ago. You're also the only one we recovered who was able to speak coherently afterwards, which is a tribute to your mental resilience. Her methods of information extraction have proven disturbingly effective. Her death is a victory for the Empire, and you made it possible." The older Sith extended a hand to Shen; in it was her lightsaber. "I'll be taking Torbaane's lightsaber as a memento. This one, I believe, is yours."

Shen took it with a bow. "Thank you, my Lord."

Cineratus took his leave then, and Shen was following Quinn back to his shuttle when she sensed a familiar presence; dark and calm. With narrowed eyes, she gestured to Vette to follow her, and headed for the prisoner transport. Spotting familiar faces, Shen stalked over to a group of prisoners. "Hold on a moment, sergeant," she said to the ranking Imperial after a glance at his rank insignia. "I have business with some of these."

The soldier took in her prison uniform and looked about to object when he noticed the lightsaber in her hand. "Of course, my Lord." Aric and Elara looked afraid, but Shorlee's aura barely wavered when she stood before them. Commander Bolus was sweating, his eyes wide with fear.

"My Lord-" Bolus began to say. Shen didn't let him finish, igniting her lightsaber and thrusting the tip through his sternum, vaporizing his heart. Bolus stared at the shaft of light buried in his chest for a moment, then collapsed. Shen deactivated the blade as he fell. "My master sends his regards, traitor," she murmured.

Vette gasped when she saw who else Shen had found. When Shen turned, the Twi'lek was glaring hate at Shorlee. Glancing at one of the fallen soldiers nearby, Shen extended her hand, and yanked his blaster pistol to her before extending it to Vette handle first. "The kill's yours if you want it."

Vette took the blaster, pointed it at Shorlee, and from the hate pulsing through Vette's aura, Shen thought she'd shoot. But then the Twi'lek's eyes narrowed and her anger faded. She lowered the blaster, shaking her head. "I'm better than her. I won't kill an unarmed prisoner."

Shen nodded. "All right. You don't have to do it, Vette."

She was about to leave the soldiers to do their job when she felt a surge of recognition from the sergeant, who had been scrutinizing the quartet Shen had confronted. "You!" he said, extending a finger to Elara. "Dorne the Deserter. I recognize you. Gone over to the Republic with the rest of the curs, I see." His anger was palpable.

"Sergeant, would you care to share?" Shen asked.

"Yes, my Lord. This is Private Elara Dorne, formerly of 17th Recon. My unit dropped with hers during the attack on Coruscant. She was a squad medic. She disappeared on Coruscant during the battle. Looks like she didn't just desert, she defected."

"Really," Shen asked. "Captain?" Quinn, who had followed her over, was one step ahead as usual. He was tapping away at his datapad. A moment later he looked up, his face hard. He showed Shen the personnel profile. It matched the woman standing in front of them. "She is indeed a defector."

Shen looked back at Elara, whose aura was laced with fear, although her face remained composed. "You've seen the price of betrayal, soldier."

Trembling, Elara shook her head. "Please, have mercy."

Shen glanced at Shorlee, whose narrowed eyes were the only indication of her worry. "No, Private, mercy is in short supply on this ship." Extending a hand, Shen lifted the blonde woman with the Force, surprised at how effortless it was. It took less exertion than it had just a few days ago. Had whatever Torbaane had done to her made her stronger? Pushing the idle thought aside, Shen reveled in her rage, burning stronger than ever. Elara clutched at her throat as Shen's power cut off her breath. "Such is the fate of all traitors," Shen said, then hurled Elara at the docking bay's magcon field. The woman had time for a single scream of terror before she passed through the magnetic field and out into the vacuum. Her form continued flying away, twitching a few times before falling still, victim of decompression.

"Sergeant, make sure these two are dropped down a hole so deep they'll never see the light of day again," Shen instructed the Imperial sergeant, gesturing at Shorlee and Aric. She waited for his affirmative reply before heading for the shuttle with Quinn and Vette in tow.

* * *

_Author's Note: Those who have played the Republic's trooper storyline probably recognize Aric and Elara. Shorlee, a cold and ruthlessly effective vanguard in the service of the Republic, is another of my characters, and still has a part to play, although whether she will cross paths with Shen again remains uncertain. The next chapter will fast-forward to Shen's fateful meeting with a certain Jedi Padawan, and so will contain some spoilers for the end of Act I of the Sith Warrior storyline. The characters will be the same, but the meeting may not occur the same way it did in the game_


	7. Heaven's Fire

_Author's Note: This chapter contains significant spoilers for Act I of the Sith Warrior's story, which I consider to be the best of the storylines in The Old Republic. So if you'd like to be surprised when you play through, don't read on._

…

_Okay. Anyone who's played a Sith Warrior knows that at the end of Act I, you confront Nomen Karr on Hutta, defeat him in combat (three times!) even after the Jedi Master taps the dark side to gain more power, and finally face both Master Karr and his Padawan, Jaesa Wilsaam. A Light Side Warrior shows Jaesa what a hypocrite Karr is, and she abandons him out of disgust, joining the Warrior but staying true to the light. A Dark Side Warrior goads her into slaying her beaten master and turning to the dark side. I went with the latter when playing, but one result it produced that I didn't like is that Jaesa isn't a very good Sith apprentice. Even after embracing the dark side, she's utterly devoted to the Warrior, and has no interest in one day challenging and overthrowing the Warrior as a true Sith should._

_But what if Jaesa Wilsaam never got the chance to see what a hypocrite Nomen Karr was? What if the Warrior immortalized the Padawan's love for her master instead of destroying it? Read on…_

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Heaven's Fire**

_Hutta_

Two years after the death of Grendil Torbaane, Shen stood on the bridge of the Imperial cruiser _Viper's Grin_ again, once more preparing to face a Jedi Master. This time, though, she was prepared for the confrontation, far more so than the Jedi who even now marched toward his doom.

In this hunt Shen had not been the prey but the predator. On Nar Shaddaa she had silenced the last of Baras' vulnerable spies, and cut down a Sith Lord in the process. She had learned the name of her quarry as well: Jaesa Wilsaam, Master Nomen Karr's Padawan and secret weapon. She had also fought a covert war against the Republic, interceded in a gang war to strengthen Imperial proxies and even descended deep beneath the Smuggler's Moon to unearth a secret hidden by Darth Revan himself.

Pursuing Wilsaam's trail to the desert world of Tattooine had also brought Shen face to face with a number of unique challenges. In a cave that seethed with Force energy she had been confronted with a shining simulacrum of herself that questioned the dark path she walked, the blood on her hands. Perhaps its words would have given her pause once, but that Shen was dead at the hands of Grendil Torbaane. The Sith she had become didn't care to debate the wisdom of her choices with a Force illusion, and so she had reached out with her power to collapse the roof of the cavern, burying the Force nexus under tons of rock.

Her time on Tattooine had also resulted in her first contact with the lost technology of the ancient Rakata; Shen had been forced to divert from her primary mission to contain an outbreak of infectious Rakata brainwashing technology unleashed by the Imperial Reclamation Service. She had eventually captured the imprisoned Rakata responsible for the plague, delivering it and all its secrets to Imperial hands.

Soon after, Shen had tracked down Jaesa's first teacher, a Jedi hermit living in the deep desert where even the Sand People feared to tread. Despite being robbed of Vette's assistance in the battle by the old Jedi's mind tricks, Shen had killed him and his current student both, and moved on with knowledge of Jaesa's background, that she was a native of Alderaan.

On that idyllic but war-torn planet Shen had chased down Jaesa's family, in service to the Republic-backed House Organa. In the course of her hunt Shen had also been recruited into the proxy war on behalf of House Thul, the Empire's puppet on the planet. After ensuring their ascendancy by cutting down the pretender king Boris Ulgo, Shen had fought her way into Organa's palace, butchered the Jedi and soldiers who defended her quarry, and killed Jaesa Wilsaam's parents, her only family. Shen even made a holorecording of those deaths and forced one of the house's surviving retainers to send it to the young Padawan.

Now her work had paid off. Jaesa's first attempt to surrender to Shen had ended in a Jedi ambush on a remote space station that had resulted in death for the ambushers, but now Nomen Karr was truly desperate, and had challenged Shen to a duel on Hutta, which she had accepted.

"My Lord, the connection is ready," Quinn informed Shen. "Our spies report that Master Karr is nearly at the rendezvous."

"Let's not keep him waiting, then," Shen replied, stepping up onto the holopad set up to one side of the bridge, sinking to her knees as the device flared to life, its beams of light playing over Shen from every angle. The starship's pristine bridge faded away, replaced by a dingy storeroom.

Twenty kilometers below them, on the planet's surface, the concealed twin of the projector sprang to life in the bunker where the duel was to take place, recreating Shen's image. This was no crude holotransmitter that projected a pale blue image of the user at the other end. This was a high-end device that worked over a range of kilometers rather than parsecs, but transmitted an image constructed of almost a billion points of light, creating a completely lifelike hologram of the user at the destination. It was the first part of the trap Shen had set for Nomen Karr, but the image by itself would not fool a Jedi Master. That would require another trick altogether.

Shen closed her eyes and sank into the Force, letting the dark side fill her. Then, she sent her senses questing outward, down to the planet that pulsed with the dark side energies of millennia of Hutt greed, cruelty and pollution. Finding the projection of herself manifested through technology, she suffused it with her own dark, rage-filled aura, while simultaneously making her own Force presence aboard the _Viper's Grin_ as small as she could.

Most Sith her age hadn't mastered either technique, and using both at the same time was taxing, but Shen relished the strain. Testing the limits of her abilities was the only way she could grow. Hearing footstep through the audio pickups in the bunker on the planet, Shen knew she had gotten ready just in time. When the steps stopped, Shen heard the _snap-hiss_of a lightsaber. Opening her eyes, she saw Nomen Karr standing before her holoimage.

"Would you strike me down before I even draw my blade, Jedi?" Shen asked.

An angry frown marred his handsome features. "For all the innocent lives you've taken I'd do it in a second, Sith. Your trail of blood ends now."

"The arrogance of Jedi is unbelievable," Shen said mockingly. "You turned that girl into a weapon and pointed her at the Empire. Did you really expect us to ignore that?"

"I'm not going to debate the merits of your actions, Sith. Take up your lightsaber."

Shen rose to her feet slowly, deliberately, focusing on maintaining her techniques, on maintaining the illusion that she was on Hutta, standing in front of Master Karr. "All right," she said. Drawing her lightsaber from her belt, she ignited it, the red blade springing to life by her side.

Drawing her lightsaber was the signal she had agreed on with Quinn. Through she couldn't hear him through the holopad's sound buffers she could sense him passing orders through the ship's captain to the gunnery crew. She saw the alarm on Nomen Karr's face as he sensed his doom a moment before the hologram dissolved into static. Still projecting her aura down onto the planet, she had a sensation of blinding heat and light, and a massive burst of energy bleeding into the Force as Nomen Karr's corporeal form was vaporized. An instant later, the holopad shut down, fading to inactivity, and Shen was back on the bridge. She could hear the turbolasers of the _Viper's Grin_ firing, the sound distinct through the hull. Shutting down her lightsaber and releasing the Force techniques, she strode over to Quinn at the gunnery section. "Direct hit, my Lord," he said. Shen focused her senses below. She couldn't feel Karr's presence at all. "He's dead," she confirmed. "Continue the bombardment until the surrounding Evocii camps are gone. Let's make this look good." The gunners continued firing on the swamp from orbit, now vaporizing encampments of renegade Evocii slaves.

Shen allowed herself a satisfied grin. Why duel a Jedi Master when she could erase his existence from low orbit? The bribes to Nem'ro and the other Hutts to allow it hadn't been cheap, but Baras, whose hatred of Nomen Karr exceeded Shen's, had enjoyed the plan she suggested so much he backed it. Shen drifted over to the command section, staying out of sight of the three-way conversation that was going on between the _Viper's Grin's_ commander Captain Yurlin, an agitated-looking Republic commander on one of the Republic ships in orbit, and a sinister-looking Twi'lek who served as Nem'ro the Hutt's majordomo.

"- is an outrage! This Imperial bombardment has claimed countless lives, including Republic personnel! Will the Cartels allow this violation of their sovereignty and neutrality?" The anger of the Republic's emissary was visible. _This one knows who was down there,_ Shen realized with glee.

"The Empire of course would never take such an action in Hutt Space without the knowledge and permission of the Cartels," Captain Yurlin replied smoothly. "The glorious Nem'ro requested our expertise in precision orbital bombardment to remove a troublesome group of Evocii terrorists, and we were more than happy to come to the aid of such a good friend of the Empire. Isn't that right?" Yurlin asked the majordomo.

Indeed it is, The Twi'lek replied in Huttese. Those Evocii were a thorn in our side for months, and the Empire's assistance is appreciated. Visitors from the Republic have always been welcome on Hutta, but a more suspicious mind than mine might wonder why Republic personnel would be visiting an area that contained nothing but empty bogs and several encampments of rebel Evocii. Surely the Republic was not consorting with known enemies of the glorious Nem'ro?

The Republic commander paled, aware that he was treading on dangerous ground. "The Republic of course respects the sovereignty of the Hutts, but I feel compelled to protest the lack of warning of this endeavor. If some warning had been offered we could have extracted our personnel-"

"Make a general announcement and alert those terrorists?" Yurlin retorted. "That would defeat the purpose of the exercise! I'm sure I speak for the Cartel as well as the Empire when I say I regret your losses, but your people shouldn't have been there."

I agree, the majordomo added. Commander, please carry our regrets to your Senate. In person. Shen glanced at the sensors and saw a pair of Hutt cruisers dropping into orbit near the Republic frigate that their emissary was presumably transmitting from.

The Republic commander glanced at something off-screen, and then glared back at Yurlin. "You haven't heard the end of this." Then he ended the transmission and the frigate broke orbit, followed by the Hutt cruisers. Nem'ro's majordomo cut his signal a moment later.

"Well played, Captain," Shen congratulated Yurlin.

"Thank you, my Lord," he said with a slight bow. "The Hutts have been paid and your Jedi foe is dead, so I believe our business here is done. Shall we return to Vaiken Spacedock?"

Shen was about to reply in the affirmative when a peculiar sensation tickled at the edges of her awareness; an animal howl of rage and loss and pain that echoed through the Force from the planet below, near the site they had bombarded to ash. For a moment Shen feared Nomen Karr had somehow survived, but this didn't feel like him. It felt like…

"Captain, prepare a shuttle with a medical team. Quinn, you're with me. We're going down to the bombardment site." Both captains looked at her in surprise. "Now!" she commanded.

"Yes, my Lord," they echoed each other. Shen strode to the turbolifts rapidly, Quinn struggling to keep up with her.

The shuttle descended into the atmosphere and over the polluted swamps of Hutta. Shen extended her senses, locking onto the burning beacon of agony and sadness that called out to her in the Force. She guided the pilot down until they reached a ravaged stretch of swamp on the edge of the bombardment zone. The trees in the area were either fallen or on fire, and in places the ground steamed from the release of heat when the turbolasers struck. "Open the ramp. Find a firm landing zone and send the medical team to me." Shen made her way to the back of the shuttle. As soon as the ramp opened she dropped free, cushioning her landing with the Force and making her way to the Force presence she sensed.

Shen found her quarry in a shallow circular depression gouged out of the soft ground. The hole was filling up with water as the ground settled and the swamp seeped back in. Lying half submerged in the filthy water was a badly burned and barely conscious human form. Shen drew close enough to confirm what she had suspected: she had found Jaesa Wilsaam. The Force in the area practically vibrated with the gravity of recent events, and Shen opened herself to it.

She saw a Force memory; Jaesa, disobeying her master and following him to his confrontation on Hutta. Shen could feel the girl's determination to save her master, even if it meant surrendering herself. Jaesa had lagged behind Nomen Karr as he made his way to the rendezvous; she had been on the outer edge of the bombardment zone when the firing started. She saw Jaesa's horror as fire rained down from the sky and her master passed from life into the Force, then fear for herself as the strikes widened. One laser blast had landed near Jaesa; the Force had given her warning and she had desperately thrown up a barrier, but it wasn't enough. Some of the energy got through, and superheated air had seared her; blinding pain and being thrown through the air were the last sensations.

Shen looked down at what was left of Jaesa Wilsaam. Her whole body was badly burned, skin seared away entirely in most places, the flesh below cracked, blackened and bleeding. Her arms ended in charred stumps at the elbow; she had thrown her hands up to ward off the blast, and they had been disintegrated entirely when her barrier failed.

Jaesa's once beautiful face was a burned, unrecognizable mess, and Shen could see the bone of her skull in places where flesh had been blasted away entirely. Her eyelids were burned away and her eyes were smoking, blackened ruins. The last remnants of her hair were still burning, and Shen extinguished those flames with a thought. Crouching beside the Padawan, Shen sent her senses inward. Jaesa's injuries continued inside her body. Her eardrums were ruptured, and blood trickled from the holes on the sides of her head; her ears were gone entirely. Her vocal chords had been seared away and her lungs badly burned by a reflexive breath of superheated air. The shock wave had damaged or ruptured several other organs, and driven bits of toxic filth from the swamps deep into her body.

By all rights the Padawan should have been dead, and Shen felt a kinship with the young Jedi; like her, Jaesa's strength in the Force kept her alive in spite of injuries that should have killed her. But even the Force couldn't sustain such a battered body indefinitely. Jaesa was fading, her heart faltering, her blood becoming toxic from contaminants and lack of oxygen. Laying her hands on Jaesa's body, Shen focused on the Padawan's damaged heart and lungs, pouring her own vitality into the girl, keeping her alive. "Quinn, get those medics here now!" Shen barked into her comlink.

"Hurrying, my Lord," Quinn said. Soon the medics poured into the depression. As wearying as it was to sustain the young Jedi, Shen kept at it as the medics started stabilizing Jaesa. When their ministrations started to take effect, Shen tapered off the flow of energy into the wounded Padawan, shaking with exhaustion herself. Once they got Jaesa onto a hover stretcher and took her back to the shuttle, Shen trailed behind with Quinn. "My Lord, is that…" he trailed off questioningly.

"That's our elusive Padawan, yes," Shen said wearily. "She followed her Master here and almost shared his fate."

"Then… forgive me, my Lord, did Darth Baras not want her dead?"

Shen smiled faintly. "He wants her neutralized, and she is. I felt her hate, her grief. Not very becoming of a Jedi Padawan, but a promising start for a Sith apprentice."

"You mean to turn her, my Lord? I doubt she will be receptive to your instruction," Quinn pointed out.

Shen shook her head. "Most good apprentices hate their masters. She'll have a better reason than most. Besides, I can always kill her later if it doesn't work out. Let's get back to the_Viper's Grin_ and see if they can salvage her."

Hours later, Shen stood behind a wall of transparisteel, watching as medical droids and surgeons worked to save what was left of Jaesa Wilsaam in the sterile medical bay of the_Viper's Grin_. Beside her, the ship's chief medical officer was briefing her on his patient's status. "We've stabilized her vitals, and saved as much living tissue as we can with kolto injections. The burns are severe; I've never seen someone survive losing that much body mass to charring."

"The Force holds great power, doctor. Will she recover?"

The medical officer got out his datapad, tapping away at it. "That's what I needed to talk to you about, my Lord. Kolto immersion is a powerful tool, but it won't restore the lost muscle mass or reverse the most severe tissue damage. Without massive cybernetic intervention she'll be bedridden even if she does pull through. Removal of dead tissue is complete, and we've started working on grafting support implants to vital organs. We're still in triage mode at the moment, trying to keep what parts of her we can functioning. If she doesn't die of shock in the next few hours she'll live, but restoring functionality is another matter." The doctor cleared his throat. "Muscle and connective tissue can be replaced with cybernetics, but given the level of damage and the need to clear anchors for the implants… my Lord, she will be more machine than organic by the time we're done."

Shen considered that, and then raised her prosthetic left arm, baling a fist and unclenching it. "I'm a third cyborg and it hadn't slowed me down much. Do it."

"Yes, my Lord. In that case, the only other question is the cranial reconstruction. She will require implants to restore her sight and hearing. Over that, we can create synthflesh coverings that will at least closely replicate her appearance before the injuries took place. All we need are holoimages of her to begin the fabrication."

Shen had been thinking about this since she had seen the unfortunate Padawan's injuries, and had done some research in the interim. She shook her head at the medical officer. "No. First, you're going to use combat enhancement models for the hearing and vision replacements." Stepping forward to one of the room's consoles, she called up the prototype designs she had found in Baras' files. The optical implants were sensitive enough to see microscopic stress fractures in metal, and the auditory enhancers could pick up an insect walking a hundred meters away in a rainstorm.

The medical officer looked shaken when he saw what Shen was showing him. "My Lord, these are experimental, and early trials indicate that users rapidly develop neuroses due to sensory overload."

"Those tests weren't done on Force users, doctor. She will adapt or perish," Shen said with finality, giving the doctor an unblinking stare until he looked away from her yellow eyes and nodded reluctantly. "As for the surface body and facial reconstruction, synthflesh won't be necessary. You'll fabricate this and use it to replace the skin and facial structures that have been destroyed." Shen called up another set of schematics on the holoprojector. The medical officer's eyes widened. "Are you certain, my Lord?"

"I am. You have your orders, doctor. Fix her, and send for me when she's functional."

"Yes, my Lord."

With its specific mission on Hutta concluded the _Viper's Grin_ resumed its normal duties, reporting back to Vaiken Spacedock for resupply, and then setting out on patrol of the sector. Shen remained onboard as she supervised Jaesa's reconstruction. It was weeks after she had pulled the Padawan back from death's door that she felt an awakening in the Force followed by a surge of rage nearby.

Meditating on the dark side in her chambers, Shen smiled faintly when she felt it. The initial surge faded, but she continued to sense an angry, confused and distraught presence. Rising to her feet, Shen collected a few effects, left her quarters and headed for the ship's medical bay. She was in the turbolift when alarms started going off and her comm implant came to life. "Apologies, my Lord, but there's a situation with your patient in medical." It was Captain Yurlin, professional as always but with a detectable note of distress in his voice.

"I know. I'm already on my way, Captain. What happened? I instructed the medical teams to keep her sedated unless I was there."

"I don't know. We'll have to sort that out later, my Lord. The recovery wing was sealed per your standing instructions, but several members of my crew didn't make it out before the lockdown."

"I'll try to find them when I get there. Out," Shen replied, stepping off of the turbolift as it opened onto the medical level. The emergency bulkhead was deployed, and a tense group of marines were stationed in the corridor, weapons ready. Their commander looked relieved when he saw Shen. "My Lord!"

"Open it up and close it behind me. I'll signal when it's safe to open again." The marine commanded nodded and commed back to the bridge. Shen could feel Jaesa's presence beyond, awake, aware, but swirling with anger and confusion. The bulkhead slid open and then shut after Shen entered. She passed several droids that looked like toys torn apart by an angry child. At the first junction one wall was smeared with blood where an unfortunate soldier had been thrown into the wall hard enough to tear him half open. A grin on her face, Shen followed Jaesa's presence and found it in the recovery ward. The large room's door hissed open, revealing darkness within. The lights were all smashed, the room lit only with starlight from the viewport along one wall. The room was in disarray, equipment and furnishing smashed and strewn about. Close to the door was a dead medic, a large surgical knife buried in his back as he had tried to flee. Shen could see an arm and a leg in a pool of blood sticking out from under a diagnostic machine that probably weighted at least half a metric ton.

None of the material chaos interested Shen, though. She focused on the still, human figure standing silhouetted by the darkened room's long viewport, staring out at the stars, hands clasped behind her back. She was dressed in the flowing, high-necked white robes with black trim that Shen had left for her.

"You killed my master," Jaesa said, her voice strangely flat, artificial. She sounded almost like a female-model protocol droid with the mechanical voice the doctors had given her.

"Of course," Shen replied. "He challenged me, challenged _my_ master. He was dead the moment he took you from Alderaan and made you into a weapon."

"Alderaan. Where you murdered my parents." Jaesa managed to inject venom into that statement even with her new voice.

"You know I did. I even sent you a recording of the deed," Shen answered.

She could feel Jaesa's anger building at that statement. "Master Karr never told me that. He only said you butchered them."

"Them, and probably a lot of other people in the Organa palace you knew and loved. Your parents died slowly, screaming. They begged for mercy at first, but before I finished with them they begged simply for death," Shen ticked that off on her fingers. "I also gutted that sanctimonious old hermit on Tattooine, and his strapping young apprentice with him. I think that one carried a flame for you, dear. Not that a good little Jedi could ever admit his feelings."

"It wasn't enough for you to take everyone I ever cared about, was it? You had to do this to me!" Her aura pulsing with rage and loss, Jaesa whirled to face Shen. Her head was completely encased in an apparently featureless shell of white plasteel that tapered down to meld with her neck on the back and sides and came down to a rounded point like a long chin in the front, interrupted only by a pair of narrow slots on each cheek where the mask's rebreather drew and enriched air to feed to Jaesa's damaged lungs. It resembled a style of mask that certain Sith favored, including the notable Darth Jadus. But unlike those helmets, Jaesa's mask was permanently grafted to her skull, replacing her ravaged features with blank anonymity. It was the only face she had now, and from the horror and despair swirling beneath the rage in Jaesa's aura, Shen knew the young Padawan had discovered this for herself. The implants built into the shell and integrated to her nervous system allowed her to see and hear quite clearly, and the rebreather even fed a sense of "smell" into her brain based on a scan of the air it drew in, but she would never feel a breeze on her face again. Her hands, where they emerged from the sleeves of the robe, were mechanical replacements grafted to her ruined arms, build like a droid's appendages although more finely made and dexterous, skinned with a more flexible version of the same white plasteel that made her face, and Shen knew that by now Jaesa had discovered that most of her "skin" excepting the few areas on her back unburned enough to be saved was now composed of the same materials, her lost muscle and connective tissue similarly rebuilt from cybernetic parts. "You've killed every person I loved and I can't even weep for them because of you!" Jaesa screamed. Her rage peaked, and that much Force energy had to find an outlet. A heavy recovery bed lifted itself off of the floor and hurtled at Shen, who deflected it past her with a thought. More heavy objects responded to Jaesa's will, flying at Shen with deadly intent.

Centered in the Force, Shen didn't move, simply nudging each projectile away. This confrontation was of vital importance if the girl was to be turned. She had to goad Jaesa into fully giving in to her hate while maintaining total mastery of the situation. When Jaesa ran out of things to throw, Shen spoke. "This is really rather childish, dear. You're going to need a lot more than thrown medical equipment to defeat me." Reaching behind her back, Shen unclipped the extra lightsaber she carried there, that she had carried since leaving Hutta, and extended her hand. "Don't you want this?"

The lightsaber flew from Shen's hands to Jaesa, who grabbed it out of the air and ignited it. The twin yellow blades sprang to life. The saber was hers, recovered from the Hutta swamp and repaired by Shen while her prospective apprentice was rebuilt. With a wordless cry of rage, Jaesa leapt at Shen, who drew and ignited her own red single blade and blocked Jaesa's leaping slash head on, slamming the younger woman's blade out of position and launching a spinning kick into her side hard enough to throw her into the wall. Jaesa was back on her feet almost immediately, charging Shen again. The yellow saber's blades were blurring arcs flying at Shen from every angle as the enraged Padawan attacked recklessly, often leaving openings for counterattacks that Shen ignored. She focused simply on defense, catching all of Jaesa's attacks in the outer circle of parries, refusing to retreat a centimeter.

Shen allowed boredom to show on her face after a short while, and felt Jaesa's frustration. "I hate you!" the Padawan screamed.

"Not enough, apparently," Shen replied. Concluding that she had seen what the young Jedi was capable of, Shen took advantage of Jaesa's next mistake to catch her in a spinning blade lock that yanked the lightsaber out of her hands and sent it spinning away. Shen kicked Jaesa in the stomach hard enough to knock her to the floor, and called the Padawan's lightsaber to her hand, extending her own blade's tip to hover inches from Jaesa's neck as she lay prone.

The younger woman froze. "Do it already!" she said in a shaking voice. "You've taken everything else from me, why play this game?"

"If I wanted you dead I would have left you in that Hutta swamp to perish of your own folly," Shen replied. "I saved you for the same reason Nomen Karr plucked you from obscurity on Alderaan: you're a useful tool."

Disbelief laced Jaesa's mechanical voice. "You can't believe I'd ever serve you. I despise you!"

Shen smiled. "Your hate is strong. It makes you powerful! That's an excellent start for a Sith apprentice. It's not as though the Jedi will want you back, broken and tainted by the dark side as you are. How many men did you just kill with anger in your heart, without even thinking about it? You were always meant to be Sith." Fear and doubt nibbled away at Jaesa's aura, and Shen pressed forward. "You want to hate me? Go ahead; it will only make you stronger." Echoing Lord Syan's words gave Shen an odd sense of dissonance for a moment, but she ignored it. "You will never defeat me as you are; you're too passionate to be a good Jedi. Nomen Karr knew that, he only overlooked it because of your talents. You'll never be a stronger Jedi than he was, and he's dead at my hand. As a Sith, passion will give you strength. Nurture that hate, gain experience and knowledge as my apprentice, and someday you may become strong enough to surpass me and have your revenge."

Shen could feel the Force humming around them, almost in anticipation as Jaesa sat on a razor's edge between light and dark. Shen emptied herself of thought, letting the dark side fill her. If Jaesa refused now, Shen might lose her, and be forced to kill the fallen Jedi.

Then the Force shivered, and Shen sensed the darkness wrapping tighter around Jaesa's heart. "I'll never trust you," she said.

"I don't need your trust, apprentice; only your obedience." Shen deactivated her lightsaber. "Kneel." Wary, Jaesa took a knee in front of Shen. "Jaesa Wilsaam is dead. You will be known as Cyl _[pronounced 'sill']_." Shen extended a hand once more. "Take your lightsaber, apprentice."

"Yes, master," Cyl said, her mechanical voice once again flat and empty.

"Come with me," Shen said. Cyl fell in step behind her, silent. Shen commed the bridge and the bulkheads opened ahead of them. Outside Quinn and Vette as well as the marines were waiting, training blasters on the faceless figure in white who trained Shen. "Lower those weapons," Shen said sternly. "This is my apprentice. She is not to be harmed." Quinn and Vette obeyed instantly, lowering their weapons out of habit in spite of their surprise, and the marines grudgingly followed suit, moving past Shen and Cyl to survey the wreckage of the recovery wing.

Quinn and Vette fell in step with Shen as she boarded the turbolift, Cyl joining them. Quinn took the news in stride, as he always did, but Vette looked at Cyl curiously. The Twi'lek girl had only heard rumors about what had happened on Hutta. "Apprentice? I didn't know droids could use the Force," Vette commented sarcastically.

Cyl didn't move, or even turn her head to look at Vette. She just lashed out with the Force, slamming the Twi'lek into the wall of the turbolift. "You let your slave talk like that, master?" Cyl asked curiously, directing her attention to Shen and roundly ignoring Vette, who glared daggers at the alabaster cyborg.

"It livens up long trips, and she's been with me for some time. Malavai, Vette, this is Cyl. We'll be seeing a lot of each other, so do try to get along."

"It is an honor to make your acquaintance, Mistress Cyl," Quinn said with a slight bow. Cyl just inclined her head in acceptance, while Vette muttered something in Huttese, rubbing the back of her head where it had hit the wall.

When she noticed Shen giving her a look of disapproval, she grimaced. "All right, all right!" Putting on a fake smile, she extended a hand to Cyl. "Lovely meeting you." Cyl continued to ignore her.

Shen suppressed a sigh as she sensed the animosity growing between the two women already. _Oh this is going to work out well,_she thought. Shen rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Let me phrase that differently: I don't care if you like each other, but you'll work together or I'll hurt you." Vette and Cyl both seemed properly cowed by that, while Shen could sense Quinn's amusement behind his flawless façade of polite attentiveness. Resisting the impulse to glare at him, she stepped out of the turbolift when it stopped on the hangar deck and headed for the _Fury_, her crew in tow.


	8. Lost and Found

**Chapter Eight: Lost and Found**

_Deep Space_

The cockpit of the _Fury_ held two occupants as it hurtled through hyperspace. Captain Malavai Quinn, dressed in his usual immaculate uniform, sat in the pilot's chair and kept one eye on the diagnostic displays, and the other on his datapad as he typed out a report. Beside him in the copilot's station sat a menacing figure dressed from head to toe in glossy black power armor with angular lines of red accenting the edges of the armor plates, a lightsaber of sturdy construction clipped to her belt. The helmet the copilot wore had a featureless black faceplate. Once known as Shen, the Sith who commanded the _Fury_ now answered publicly to a different name: Lord Folcana. The name and rank were bestowed upon her by her master Darth Baras following the death of Nomen Karr.

The _Fury_ was three parsecs out from Taris. Quinn and Folcana were the only passengers, Cyl Vette and Folcana's newest subordinate Lieutenant Pierce having remained behind on the ruined world to stamp out the last Republic holdouts while Folcana moved on to her next assignment.

Leaning back in her seat and ostensibly staring out at the mottled whirl of hyperspace, Folcana studied the faint reflection of Quinn's face in the viewport, glad that the helmet hid her gaze. Through no fault of his own the good captain was becoming a problem, and it wasn't the kind of problem that Folcana could solve with a lightsaber or the Force. She was Sith, more powerful than ever, and with more responsibilities than ever. She needed to be focused. Distractions were a potentially deadly liability, and the captain was becoming a serious distraction.

Grendil Torbaane's assault on Folcana's memories had simplified life for her at first. Her old hesitations and regrets were gone, and following that incident Folcana had discovered that the dark side came to her stronger than ever. Power and duty had been her only concerns. But nature abhorred a vacuum, and increasingly Folcana found that in idle moments her thoughts turned to Quinn. She couldn't deny anymore that she was drawn to the Imperial captain. Left to her own inclinations, Folcana would have pursued a liaison already. She thought that Quinn might be interested in her, though he was far too proper and aware of rank to give any overt indication. Unfortunately, this was a lousy time for dalliance. Baras never said it outright, but Folcana had picked up on the precariousness of his situation. He was preparing to move against his master, a member of the Dark Council, and she knew that when the time came, she would be drawn into his machinations and probably called upon to face one of the most powerful Sith in the Empire in combat.

As if that wasn't enough there was Cyl and all the complications Folcana's delightfully vicious apprentice presented. Cyl had proven to be an able pupil, not only an asset on the battlefield but politically as well. Folcana and Baras had both been pleased with Cyl's zeal for hunting Sith who secretly clung to the light, and the former Jedi's success had benefited both of them. Privately, Folcana suspected that Cyl hated Jedi and light sider Sith because they were a reminder of what she had lost, but her apprentice's motivations mattered less than her results. Unfortunately, Cyl was a double-edged sword, one that would strike at her at the first sign of weakness or advantage, and Folcana was loathe to make herself vulnerable in any way her half-mechanical pupil could exploit.

Folcana's musings were brought to an abrupt halt when the _Fury_ shuddered violently, the deck bucking like a wounded ronto as alarms filled the cockpit. Quinn reacted instantly, glancing at several diagnostic panels that were flashing red before lunging for the hyperdrive controls. He yanked the levers back abruptly, executing an emergency exit from hyperspace that shook the ship again. The blur of hyperspace faded into a star field. Over the alarms Folcana heard what sounded like a muffled explosion from the rear of the ship, and a screeching noise like tearing metal before the ship settled into stillness.

Quinn was examining the diagnostics intently, sliding from one screen to the next as fast as he could read the instruments.

"Talk to me, Quinn," Folcana said.

"I'm reading cascading failures in both power cores. Core one is a loss. Core two shut down in time to preserve structural integrity, but the heat readings I'm seeing are disturbing. The reaction may be out of control. Nothing more to do up here, we need to get to the engine bay." Suiting actions to words he got up out of his seat and ran aft. Folcana followed him, concerned. Beyond the danger she was sensing, if Quinn was skipping his "my Lord"s, something was badly wrong.

Quinn was working on the engine diagnostic computer when she arrived. The first power core was dead and smoking behind him. The second one, in front of him, wasn't making any noise and looked intact, but Shen could feel the heat coming off of it.

"This is bad," Quinn said without looking up. "The safeguards shut down core two before it exploded, but the thermal reaction inside has become self-sustaining. Once it melts through the outer casing it will explode anyways."

"How long do we have?" Folcana asked.

"Minutes," Quinn replied. "The heat vents shut down with the rest of the core, I'm trying to bring them back online, but internal components were damaged by the surge of power. It's not responding."

"If enough heat is removed from the core it will stabilize on its own?" Folcana asked.

"Yes," Quinn answered.

"Then tell me when enough is gone. Hopefully this doesn't fry us," Folcana said grimly before opening herself to the Force, letting the dark side fill her and extending her senses towards the core. She had learned techniques for drawing energy from a living being, but taking it from a machine was a new experience. Latching onto the dangerously vast well of thermal energy in the core, Folcana began siphoning it out through the Force. Almost immediately she could feel pressure building inside her. She couldn't hold that much energy and it would kill her if she tried, so she directed it away, into the ship's hull. The pressure eased, and she continued pulling energy out of the overloading core. The effort was draining, but she pushed past it.

Focused on the core, Folcana only distantly heard groans and cracks as the ship's armor plating was forced to absorb more and more heat. Quinn called up the ship's general diagnostics on his console. "The core's almost stable, but the outer hull can't take any more heat," he informed her. Folcana stopped feeding the energy into the ship's frame, and immediately the pressure built up inside her again.

"Well where else can I put it, Quinn, we're in space," before he spoke the answer occurred to her, and she grimaced. "This won't be pleasant," she predicted. Drawing out the last of the core's heat, she shunted it all into the interior and atmosphere of the ship.

Immediately the temperature spiked inside the ship. Folcana saw Quinn start to sweat heavily, and felt her body doing the same. Pulling off her helmet, she felt the hot air wash over her. Her armor became stiflingly hot almost immediately, and she began peeling it off. "Are we out of danger, Quinn?" Folcana asked as she disengaged her breastplate.

"Yes… my Lord," he said turning his gaze away from her undressing and back to the console, wiping some sweat off of his forehead. "I need to do some diagnostics to determine what repairs are needed to restore the core to functionality."

"First change into something cooler before you pass out," Folcana instructed him.

"Yes, my Lord," he said with faint relief evident in his voice. He left, returning a few minutes later in a short-sleeved tunic and cut-off pants. After working with the diagnostics for a while longer while Folcana, who had stripped down to her undertunic and shorts, sweated and waited. Without main power to climate control, the air stayed hot. Emergency power was keeping the air oxygenated, but that was all.

When Quinn was done, he looked up, his expression grave. "We have another problem, my Lord."

Folcana sighed. "What is it?"

"Several components inside the core are damaged, including some key power regulators. It won't be safe to turn the core back on until they're replaced."

"We don't have replacements?" Folcana guessed.

"No, my Lord, we do have replacement parts on board, but replacing them poses a problem. The core's outer shielding is magnetically reinforced; the rings you see on the join in the halves of the casing hold the core together when it's at full power. I could demagnetize the casing and replace the parts easily enough, but we don't have the reserve energy left to remagnetize the casing, and without that the core will fly apart before we make it to the nearest space dock."

"That seems like a design flaw," Folcana observed.

"It is. The _Fury_-class is a new model and it's unlikely this particular situation has arisen yet," Quinn observed.

Folcana looked at the core, thinking. An idea occurred to her, but the scale of is gave her pause. Experimentally, she got a telekinetic hold on the halves of the magnetic casing and pulled. Nothing happened at first. She applied more force, but the magnets held fast. Frowning, she focused, feeding on her anger at the obstinate piece of machinery. With a metallic groan of protest, the casing slid apart by a few centimeters. The strain was incredible, the attractive force of the magnets was several hundred tons, and after a few moments she lost her hold on the casing and it slammed back together with a bang.

"My Lord?" Quinn said, looking at the casing in surprise. Folcana felt light-headed from the heat and exertion, and had to grip the safety railing to stay on her feet.

"How long will it take you to perform the repairs, Quinn?" Folcana asked quietly.

"A few minutes, perhaps," he replied. "Can you hold the casing apart that long?"

"I don't know," she said honestly, seeing the understanding in his eyes. Even if she could pry it apart far enough, if she lost her grip while he was replacing the damaged parts the casing would crush him in an instant. "Do we have another option?"

"Beyond hoping for rescue? No. We could demagnetize the casing, perform the repairs and run the reactor on minimal power to power life support. We wouldn't be able to power the engines or the hyperdrive, and the hypercomm was fried by the initial power surge. We could transmit a distress signal at relativistic speed."

"What's the likelihood that someone would find us?" Folcana asked.

"It would be quite some time, in all likelihood. Months at a minimum, possibly a year or more. The Fury has supplies to last us that long, but…"

"If I'm out of action that long, I might as well be dead," Folcana finished the sentence for him. Baras would either be dead, in which case she would be hunted as his former apprentice, or he would kill her himself for disappearing at a time when he needed her. "You're going to be the one risking your life to fix it, Quinn. I won't order you to do it."

Surprise showed on his face, and Folcana was a bit surprised herself at how quick her decision had been. As un-Sith as it was, she couldn't bring herself to force him to enter the core while she tried to hold it open, even though she knew she could and he'd obey. She had come to care about him too much.

Something like genuine warmth crossed Quinn's face. "I won't be the cause of your undoing, my Lord," he said softly. "Let me get the parts, and then we can open the core."

Quinn departed, and Folcana sat down on the floor of the engine room, pushing aside her confused welter of thoughts and slipping into meditation, emptying her mind and feeling the Force. She couldn't afford to think about her feelings for her eminently distracting captain if she was going to keep him alive.

When he returned with the tools and parts, Folcana was ready. She was one with the Force, and its power filled her, as much as she could handle. She could feel the strain in every cell of her body. She would need it all to do this. Folcana focused her will and all of her power on the core casing. Slowly, the magnetized halves slid apart, one Centimeter, then two, then five and ten. As they moved further from each other the strength of the magnetic attraction eased slightly, but it was still more than she's ever moved with her mind, and she'd have to maintain it for as long as it took Quinn to fix the core. When the halves were two meters apart, they reached the end of their rails and stopped.

"I will be quick, my Lord," Quinn promised, and then dove in.

Sweat soaked Folcana's underclothes and trickled down her body, more from the strain than the heat now, and her face curled into a grimace of anger and pain. Her whole body burned with the ferocity of the Force energy she was channeling to keep the magnets apart. Filled with the Force and hyperaware, she could feel cells in her body failing, burning up as the power she was asking them to contain overwhelmed them. Seconds passed with exquisite slowness as the edges of the casing trembled, groaning, straining towards each other. They slid a centimeter, than another, and Folcana's eyes widened with alarm. The closer they got the stronger their attraction became. They slid another centimeter. She had a horrible vision of the casing slipping from her grasp, reducing her complicated captain to paste before she could find out what he meant to her, before she could explore the possibilities of what might be. Grinding her teeth and feeding on that fear and fury, Folcana opened herself further to the Force, ignoring the growing, searing pain throughout her body, and the casing slid back apart to its limit.

Time lost meaning in the raging torrent of Force energy. Folcana's consciousness narrowed down to being an anchor; refusing to let the magnets move, and refusing to let her mind be crushed by the power she channeled, knowing that if she faltered for a moment she would fail on both counts. Fatigue clawed at her, but she refused to let it win.

Eventually she became aware of something tiny scraping at the edge of her consciousness. It was so insignificant next to her focus on the Force that she ignored it at first, pushing it aside like the pain and the fatigue. But that minute scratching was insistent, and eventually it wormed its way into her awareness. "My Lord, it's done! You can stop!"

Words. The words were meaningless next to the Force, the endless river of power. It was… glorious. The pain was fading. There was only the Force. Her eyes were shut tight, but she was distantly aware of a green glow playing over her eyelids, and a welcome coolness enveloping her body. "Folcana, you're killing yourself!" the desperate voice came again. "It's over, you have to let go!"

Folcana? Who was that? The name meant nothing. There was only the endless river of the dark side pouring through her. Nothing else mattered.

"Shen, please stop! Don't die on me!" Her eyes snapped open with a gasp. Quinn knelt in front of her, grasping her shoulders, his face inches from hers. The green light was coming from his hovering medical probes, which circled around her, soaking her with a chilled kolto mist, drenching Quinn's arms as well as they attempted to combat the cell death her overuse of the Force was causing. His concern turned to relief when her incandescent yellow eyes met his blue ones. "The repairs are done, you can stop now!"

Nodding slowly, mind fuzzy with fatigue, Shen looked at the core. She was about to let go when her danger sense screamed at her. No, she couldn't let go all at once, then impact of the core's halves would tear it apart. She had to do it slowly. Extending one trembling hand towards the core, she began allowing the casing to ease shut gently. With each centimeter she gave it, the magnetic attraction got stronger, but she refused to give in after coming this far. Looking over his shoulder, Quinn saw what she was doing. When they closed to a meter, he looked at the medical diagnostic tool on his wrist, worry plain on his face. "That's close enough, you can let go."

"Not yet," she gasped, her voice so twisted and strained she barely recognized it. Three quarters of a meter. Half a meter. Quinn's grip on her shoulders tightened.

"You have to let go, Shen," he pleaded. "Your body's burning up! You're going to die if you don't stop."

_Die?_ Her mind was going fuzzy again. _How can I die? I feel… so alive._ The Force burned through her like an inferno, filling her with energy. The cells in her body were exploding in chains now, but the pain was gone, like it had never been there. Thirty centimeters. Twenty. Her arm fell, her muscles too fatigued to keep it raised.

She felt Quinn's hand pressed against her cheek. "Please stop, Shen. I can't lose you," he said.

Her eyes widened. They were words she never though her always-proper Captain Quinn would speak. Unable to think straight and drunk on the Force, she obeyed. Instinctively, she trusted him. Odd, for a Sith to feel that. She hadn't known she was still capable of trusting anyone. Letting the torrent of Force energy taper off, she released her grip on the core casing. It slammed together loudly.

"Okay…" she whispered.

Gently, Quinn lowered her to lie on the deck. "Yes, my Lord, you'll be okay." He was smiling. Her vision was blurring, and she couldn't be sure, but she thought that she saw a glimmer of moisture in his eyes.

Somewhere, she found the strength to grip his wrist. "Not 'my Lord'," she said, shaking her head slightly in spite of the vertigo it caused. "Not…" she tried to finish the thought, but she fell through the deck, into a bottomless well of blackness, and unconsciousness claimed her.

* * *

Shen's eyes slid open, gazing at the familiar ceiling of her cabin aboard the _Fury_. She lay in bed for a moment, taking stock. The background hum of the engines was back; the power core was working and they were moving again. The air on her face was cool, the climate systems working as normal now. Her body felt… languid. When she sat up, her muscles and joints ached slightly, but nothing debilitating. Making her way into the refresher, she looked at herself in the mirror. What she was dismayed her. Her eyes had darkened from yellow to orange, and ugly, dark lines radiated from the corners of her eyes and across her cheeks. Her skin was noticeably paler, as well. Her skin had been a rich shade of ebony, now some of the the color had leeched out of it; she looked in the mirror at a cyborg with milky brown skin contrasting with the prosthetics that retained her old skin color, making obvious how much of her body was mechanical, including her left arm and leg. In a moment of despairing insight, she understood why so many Sith hid their bodies with robes and masks. Her armor had always been merely functional before, but she could see it becoming a prison; a tool to hide the ravages of the dark side from sight.

Bad enough that her face and body were marred with cybernetics, but with the dark side taking its toll as well, no one who knew her back on Tyrin III would recognize her now. Doubt clouded the hope she had barely begun to feel. Could Quinn… could anyone look at her like this and feel anything but revulsion?

Stepping back out to her quarters to get dressed, she hesitated. To one side, 2V-R8 had laid out a simple civilian outfit. To the other, her armor gleamed on its rack; no doubt the droid had polished it before returning it to her quarters. She looked between them.

The armor was her easiest route. She would become Lord Folcana, and Quinn would be back to his usual, efficient, impersonal self. If she emerged from her quarters wearing the armor, the events on the engine deck would be forgotten. She might never see him open up again. But she would never have to risk seeing disgust in his eyes when he saw her face.

She looked back at the simple tunic and leggings. If she wore those, maybe… maybe she could just be Shen again. Maybe she could start finding out who Shen had been, before a dark Jedi erased her. Maybe she'd see the Malavai Quinn who saw her as more than a Sith. Or maybe she'd see him put on his cold, professional exterior, uninterested in what she had become. She didn't know if any part of her but the ambitious, Force-driven killer would survive if that happened.

_If I put on the armor, that's all I'll be anyways,_ she realized. Striding over to the bed, she donned the tunic, leggings and slippers 2V-R8 had left for her. Steeling herself, she departed her quarters. She found Quinn in the common area. He was back in uniform, a frown of concentration on his face as he worked on a datapad and sipped from a cup of caf.

"My Lord, it's good to see you up and about," he said. "How are you feeling?"

"I've been better," she answered truthfully, "but I'll recover." Steeling herself, she sat down on the couch beside him, closer than was perhaps proper, but she didn't care. Better to give him a look up close now and get it over with.

Quinn looked surprised at her proximity, but didn't draw away. "My Lord?"

She shook her head. "No, Malavai. Not 'my Lord'. When I was so lost in the Force I couldn't think, 'my Lord' was not the name I heard."

"Forgive me… Shen. I did not wish to be improper."

"I wish you would," Shen replied, "be improper, that is." _Here goes nothing._ "Malavai, what would we be to each other if I wasn't a Sith, and you weren't an Imperial officer?"

He hesitated. "I… we are those things. What use is it to speculate otherwise?"

Shen managed to keep her dismay from her face. "We are," she said evenly, "but I'm not willing to let that be the only reason we don't find out what could be. For the longest time now I've been afraid to think about us, to talk about us, because the timing is inconvenient, and it could be dangerous. But we almost died yesterday, and on the course Baras is charting one or both of us could be dead in a month or a year, and if I lost you I think I would always regret not finding out if you would regret losing me." Shen paused, searching Quinn's expression for any clue. He looked startled, thoughtful, but he didn't say anything.

"If I've misread you, or this," she said, brushing a hand over her eyes, and the dark horizontal lines on her face that crisscrossed with the vertical metal bands of her facial prosthetics, "is just repulsive to you then forget I said anything." When he didn't respond immediately, mortification filled her. _I'm such a fool!_ She berated herself. _He knows better than anyone that I'm nothing but a killer with half a body and no future._Her thoughts flashed back to the engine bay. _He was just being a good medic, keeping his patient alert. I'm so stupid!_

Unable to face him anymore and unwilling to let him see the tears that threatened her, she turned and had half-risen to her feet when Malavai's hand wrapped around her wrist and pulled. Startled, she was drawn back to sit beside him. She turned to face him in surprise, and then he was holding her shoulders and kissing her, and she went still with shock. Then her arms snaked around his neck, their bodies pressed together, and happiness filled her.

When they came up for air, Malavai met her eyes. "I would regret losing you, Shen, more than I thought possible. I've grown so accustomed to seeing you as invincible, to watching you challenge impossible odds and walk away unscathed, that I didn't think it mattered if I waited until it felt appropriate. Yesterday reminded me that even the strongest Sith are mortal. I've always been too cautious, but I won't hold back anymore." He kissed her again, and it just felt _right._

When their lips parted again, he looked at her seriously. "Don't for a second think that the marks of power make you any less beautiful to me," he said, his fingers brushing her cheeks gently. "Anyone who feels that way doesn't deserve you."

Shen felt moisture in her eyes, but this time she didn't care if he saw it. She embraced him, their lips meeting once more, and her fingers began working at the fasteners on his uniform's collar. She felt his hands on the lacing at the neck of her tunic, and raised her arms to help as he pulled it over her head. Shen let her torso fall back on the couch, Malavai leaning over her, their faces close. It took her a little more work to get his jacket off, his outfit being less designed for casual removal than hers.

Minutes later, when they were both considerably less clothed, Malavai drew back from trailing a line of kisses down her neck to murmur, "Are there any special steps I should know about?"

Shen's thinking was a bit fuzzy, in a good way, so it took her a moment to realize what she was asking. Then she laughed softly and kissed him on the cheek. "You've been the ship's designated medical officer for how long and you never took a peek at my files to find out how far the cybernetics extended?"

"My Lo- Shen, I would never do that," he protested. "It would be an invasion of your privacy!"

"Mmm-hmm. I hope you're ready to invade more than my privacy," Shen purred, "and no, there aren't any special steps. All the relevant parts for this particular activity are still the originals."

He kissed her again, and there was no more need for words.


	9. Spoils of War

**Chapter Nine: Spoils of War**

_Dromund Kaas_

Folcana was forced to conclude that for whatever faults Darth Vengean possessed, he was no slouch at finding and training his apprentices. Lord Nalec, the obese Rattataki she was fighting was a juggernaut like her, and he was skilled. His mass gave him a solidity that seemed to shrug off her most determined blows and Force attacks. He stayed on his guard, keeping to the Soresu form. Folcana knew herself to be the superior Sith; he wouldn't be able to hold her off much longer. But the alarms shrieking around them meant that he didn't have to win; he just had to stay alive until his master's reinforcements arrived at the spacious chambers in Kaas City where they fought.

Glancing off to her right, Folcana saw that Draagh, Darth Baras' other apprentice, wasn't going to be any help. He was engaged in a fierce duel of his own against the marauder Lord Reny, another of Vengean's apprentices and an acrobatic swordswoman who seemed to have more joints than a human should possess, her movements fluid and frustratingly hard to predict.

Folcana almost paid for her inattention when Nalec's blade came close enough to her face to singe her cheek. "You'd best be worrying about yourself, traitor," he jeered.

Folcana drove him back a few steps with a flurry of lightsaber strikes. "Oh come now, we're all Sith. Betrayal is hardly treason." They both knew the score. Darth Baras, his star ascendant and his apprentices powerful, had set his sights on the Dark Council seat of his master, Darth Vengean. Folcana and Draagh were the tools of his bid for power, and their attack had gone smoothly at first; the early layers of Vengean's security had fallen easily. But now, close to Vengean's inner chambers, they faced his strongest defenders.

From the corner of her eye, Folcana saw Cyl's twirling alabaster form cut down the last of the acolytes she had broken off from Folcana to face when they entered the massive antechamber. Edging around Nalec, Folcana managed to get him to turn his back to Cyl. She sensed her apprentice approach and smiled, glad that her helmet hid her face.

Intent on keeping Nalec focused on her, Folcana abandoned the defensive Soresu form for the aggressive Shien style, hurling herself at the massive Rattataki with new ferocity, risking a devastating counterattack in order to shake Nalec's defense. He was sweating now, forced to defend closer to his body with less margin for error. One of her strikes got past him, singeing his arm. He winced, stepping back to give him some room. Then she saw alarm on his face, and he half-turned to block the slash Cyl had aimed at his back. Folcana closed, eager to finish the fight, but Nalec ducked under her swing and planted a side kick in her gut that threw her backward, falling to the floor. As Folcana levered herself up she was alarmed to see him bearing down on Cyl with a merciless series of blows, the alabaster-skinned apprentice dodging frantically, outclassed by her opponent. Gritting her teeth in frustration, Folcana gazed up at the high ceiling. Reaching out with the force, she pulled down on the section of ceiling above them with all of her strength.

The durasteel-reinforced permacrete resisted at first, then succumbed to her will and fell, several boulder-sized pieces raining down on all three of them. Folcana rolled away easily. Cyl and Nalec, closer to the center of the collapse, were not so fortunate. Both of them sensed the collapse, but Nalec wasn't agile enough to get away. He managed to dodge one massive chunk of debris, but was crushed by another before he could even scream.

Cyl fared better, dancing away from the first permacrete boulder to fall, and leaping over the second. As the hole in the ceiling widened from structural failure and more debris fell, Cyl danced between the raining chunks of rock, even making a few angled jumps up the sides of falling rocks when there was nowhere to go on the ground. Just moments later Cyl shot out of the growing rock fall to land beside Folcana, who had gotten to her feet and dusted herself off.

"You…" Cyl's mechanical voice throbbed with rage as she stalked up to Folcana. "You dropped the ceiling on me!"

"I dropped the ceiling on Nalec," Folcana replied calmly.

"I was right next to him!" she screamed.

"And now you're right next to me. I knew you'd survive. Let's go."

Cyl's reply was drowned out by a woman's scream. Folcana turned to see Draagh's opponent fall to the ground, her sword arm severed just below the shoulder. She clutched at the stump, her face pale and drawn as Draagh stood over her with a sadist's grin. He twirled his lightsaber, inflicting shallow, painful wounds on his fallen foe, enjoying her agonized screams.

Folcana sighed, locking her saber on and throwing it. The crimson blade rotated low to the ground, and decapitated Reny in a smooth arc before returning to Folcana's hand. Draagh glared at her furiously, to which she just shrugged. "The screaming was becoming irritating. Play later, Lord Draagh. We're on the clock, remember?"

Still fuming, Draagh nodded reluctantly, and they headed for the door to Vengean's private quarters, Cyl trailing behind. Folcana could sense her apprentice's anger at being endangered so casually, but she wouldn't do anything about it yet.

While Draagh used access codes Baras' spies had obtained to open the blast doors, Folcana turned to Cyl. "Remain here. Don't let anyone disturb us. This shouldn't take long," she instructed her apprentice.

"You don't want me with you?" Cyl asked.

Folcana shook her head. "You're not ready to face a Darth yet, Cyl. You'd only be in the way."

The blast doors to Vengean's inner sanctum hissed open. Folcana and Draagh entered together. The doors closed behind them with Cyl standing guard outside, a motionless alabaster sentry.

"Have you ever faced a Darth before, Lord Folcana?" Draagh asked conversationally as they made their way down a richly appointed hallway.

"Only our master, in training exercises. I've fought Jedi Masters before, though."

"How did that end?" he asked curiously.

"I'm still here. My apprentice was the Padawan of the last one. But Baras has already told you that. What about you?"

"Jedi Master, no. A Darth? Yes." When Folcana gave him a surprised look he elaborated. "Not alone, of course. I fought alongside my first master and another Lord. We chased down a renegade Darth trying to flee the Empire."

Folcana would have enquired further, but they left the hallway and found themselves in a large room dominated by a long table, suitable for entertaining or meetings. Standing in front of it was Darth Vengean, his unlit lightsaber in hand. "Baras works quickly," he said conversationally in a gravelly voice. "I'll hand it to that upstart; he's found some exceptional apprentices. It's a shame you came this far to die."

Folcana and Draagh moved a few paces apart to flank Vengean, who shook his head sadly. "It doesn't have to end this way. You've impressed me, and I'm in need of new apprentices; you two could join me. We'll crush Baras easily, and you can serve a member of the Dark Council instead of dying here."

Folcana didn't bother answering, while Draagh laughed mockingly. "We will be apprentices of a Dark Council member. Our master will have your seat when you're dead."

Vengean sighed, looking like a disappointed grandparent. "I tried," he said. Behind Draagh, Folcana saw a circular section of the wall slide out and rotate to reveal a concealed double blaster cannon, its barrels tracking toward Draagh's back. Throwing a hand out, Folcana got a Force grip on the auto-turret and ripped it clean out of the wall. Folcana felt sparks fall on her back as Draagh did the same thing to a turret behind her. They exchanged a glance and then they both hurled the severed turrets at Darth Vengean.

A faint smile playing across his face, Vengean leapt backward, landing on the far side of the table as the projectiles crushed the side where he had been standing. Four more blaster turrets slid out of the wall, two on each side, and opened fire on them.

Igniting her lightsaber, Folcana deflected the stream of fire back at the turrets, the ruby lances of energy chewing away at one turret and then the other until they exploded. Draagh's solution was more direct. He blurred into a Force-enhanced sprint, outrunning the turret's tracking capabilities and severing them from the wall with his lightsaber.

Folcana saw Vengean grab a detonator from his belt and depress the trigger. The Force screamed danger at her, and she threw herself back into the entry hall, putting her activated shield between herself and Vengean. Through the shimmering energy field she saw Draagh throw himself forward into the room Vengean had retreated into.

Then all six deactivated laser turrets exploded violently. The pressure wave hit Folcana's shield in midair and hurled her further down the hall. She rolled to her feet on landing, and sprinted back towards Vengean, hearing the hum and crack of lightsabers. Leaping forward, she shot out of the smoke cloud that filled the meeting room, flying toward the pair. Vengean had battered Draagh's weapon aside and was about to deliver a killing blow, but he had to turn to block Folcana's attack, and Draagh recovered.

Flanking Vengean, Draagh and Folcana battered away at the older Sith, who was a whirling tempest of red energy as he endeavored to keep their blades away from him with his own. Vengean was a lightsaber master, and Folcana understood the wisdom of Baras sending both of his apprentices to defeat Vengean; neither of them would have stood a chance against him alone. In spite of the fact that he had to keep two skilled Lords off of him, Vengean still managed to protect himself and counterattack, both with his blade and the occasional Force push or gout of lightning that forced Folcana and Draagh to dodge and remain wary.

Two on one was still a huge disadvantage even for a Darth, though. Eventually Folcana managed to trap Vengean's blade in a lock long enough for Draagh to slice deep into the back of Vengean's leg. The Darth fell to one knee, managing to deflect a few more blows before losing his sword arm to Folcana. She got to see the moment of fear in the old Darth's eyes before Draagh's blade plunged down through the back of his neck, the glowing red tip emerging from his sternum. Folcana and Draagh's eyes met over their dying opponent, and then both threw themselves back in Force leaps, not a moment too soon. As life left Vengean's body, the decades of dark-side energy built up in the venerable Sith's body exploded in a violent purple fireball of pent-up rage and hate. Forewarned by their master about the consequences of a powerful darksider's death both apprentices cleared the blast radius. When the light faded, there was a smoking crater burned into the stone floor. Darth Vengean was gone.

Draagh wiped some sweat from his brow and then smiled. "It's done. Our master will sit on the Dark Council."

Folcana nodded. "He will. Darth Baras will have all the power he's coveted," she agreed, her heart heavy. She had been preoccupied since her master had told her about Draagh. She knew he thought his assertions about how harmless Draagh was were meant to put her at ease about her own position, but she didn't believe a word of it. She'd been considering carefully what she had to do, and now she couldn't put it off any longer. "Darth Vengean is dead. Now it's your turn, Lord Draagh." With that, she hit him with the strongest Force blast she could. He sensed it, and was already dodging when she let fly, but he didn't avoid it completely, and even the edge of the blast slammed him into the wall. He fell to one knee, glaring at Folcana.

"What are you doing?" Draagh demanded.

"I know Baras doesn't have much regard for me despite his honeyed words, but after all I've done for him I thought he at least gave my intelligence some credit! As soon as he told me about you, I knew you were my replacement."

Draagh laughed in disbelief. "You're being paranoid, Folcana. Powerful Darths usually have multiple apprentices. I'm not here to replace you; Baras knows I'm not strong enough to do what you do. I'm here to compliment your strengths with my own, nothing more. You're the senior apprentice, I don't dispute it. There's no need to kill me."

Folcana sighed, circling Draagh, who had gotten to his feet warily. "So you take me for a fool, too. As you said, a seat on the Dark Council will be his. Baras doesn't need a warrior apprentice anymore; he needs a boot-licking little toady like you, a political creature. He knows I'll become a threat to him soon, so he's planning to kill me while the difference in power between us is still significant. But he'll hesitate if he loses his intended replacement, and that will give me time to grow further in power." Folcana shook her head sadly. "But don't worry, Draagh. Baras will know you died heroically, doing your duty to the last before Vengean cut you down."

Draagh looked at her thoughtfully. "My master _has _underestimated you. He thought you were too trusting to see the end coming. But you've made a mistake too, Folcana; you've underestimated _me_." A feral grin spread across Draagh's handsome face. Folcana felt his Force aura shift and then _expand_. His power spiked far past her present strength. "My master wasn't going to kill you himself; he trained me to end you. I know everything he taught you and more."

Far from being frightened or surprised, Folcana laughed. "Baras has always had an inflated opinion of what he has taught me over the years. Take your aura suppression for instance; useful for hiding your true strength from opponents and allies alike; Baras never taught it to me because he's always been wary of my power. I had to learn it on my own." As she spoke, Folcana let her own suppression technique fade, and watched Draagh pale slightly as he sensed her true power climb to exceed his own. "Now fight me, you little worm," she snarled, leaping at him.

Freed from pretense, Draagh fought far more skillfully than he had against Reny or Vengean. Folcana found a grin spreading across her face as they dueled. She had been expecting to snuff out a nexu cub, but this was challenging. Draagh was almost as strong as she was, and he had benefited from more training with Baras than she had. He scored first blood, a slash cutting through her armor and scoring her ribs, but her riposte sliced open his left shoulder, and his left arm went limp. After that it was only a matter of time. A minute later she battered through his guard and sliced through his right hand, cutting his lightsaber in half as well. Draagh backed away from her, eyes wide with fear. "You win, I admit it," he gasped, grimacing in pain. "I can be of use to you. You will need help to defeat Baras; my help."

Folcana shook her head. "I don't want to replace Baras."

Draagh's brow furrowed, and he looked puzzled. "What?"

"It's something that men like you and Baras will never understand; for every Sith like you who's a power-hungry sociopath, there's another like me who pretends to be one to survive. I'm good at fighting, not intrigue. I don't want Baras' job, I just don't want to be murdered by him for doing mine. Fortunately, on rare occasions I can actually make the galaxy a slightly better place; by killing you, for example."

"No… no!" Draagh screamed, before his words were cut off as Folcana drove her blade through his heart. Drawing it from his chest, she decapitated him for good measure as he fell. There was no explosion of dark energy this time; Draagh hadn't been using the dark side long enough.

Deactivating her blade and clipping it to her belt, Folcana made her way to the exit. When she opened the blast door, Cyl was standing in the same place, but the room had new additions. The corpses of a dozen troopers and a Sith acolyte littered the floor around the door. Folcana noted a few scorch marks on her apprentice's alabaster form that hadn't been there when she left, but otherwise Cyl was unharmed. "I see you had company," she commented.

Cyl shrugged. "They weren't much of a challenge, master," she replied. "Where is Lord Draagh?"

"Darth Vengean killed Draagh during the battle; I couldn't save him, but I avenged him."

"Darth Baras isn't going to be happy about that," Cyl observed.

"Probably not, but he was aware of the risk. He sent us to kill his master; injury or death was always a possibility. C'mon, let's go tell him he's on the Dark Council now; should improve his mood a bit."

Folcana in her black armor and Cyl in white departed the smoking chambers of Darth Vengean, leaving behind only wreckage and corpses.


	10. Complications

**Chapter Ten: Complications**

_Hoth_

Folcana and Vette climbed the boarding ramp of the _Fury_, which was berthed in a hollowed out ice cave where the Empire had made its base on the frozen ship graveyard that Hoth had become. Folcana's armor had been modified for the mission, adding internal heaters and a cold-resistant chassis to deal with Hoth's sub-zero temperatures. Vette simply wore conventional Imperial cold-weather gear over her armor. Even so, the Twi'lek was shivering. While the dark side of Ryloth was colder than Hoth, Twi'leks were more accustomed to heat. In the past Vette would have been complaining non-stop through their mission on Hoth, but the Twi'lek woman was stronger now than when Folcana had met her, harder. She dealt with the cold stoically.

At least their mission was done now. Darth Baras had sent Folcana to recover logs from some wrecked Imperial ships that implicated one of his rivals on the Dark Council in some shady business dealings with corporations known to be owned by Republic senators. The information would allow Baras to gain the upper hand in his Dark Council dealings.

When they boarded the ship, Vette sighed with relief as warm air surrounded her. Tossing back her hood, she rubbed her lekku. "Tips went numb an hour ago," she explained when she saw Folcana looking.

2V-R8 helped Folcana divest herself of her armor as Vette stripped out of her cold weather gear. Once the armor was removed, Folcana slipped a simple black robe over her underclothes. The two women made their way into the main section of the ship.

Quinn and Pierce were there, Quinn reclining on a couch reading from a datapad, Pierce sitting at the weapons bench cleaning his blaster. Drifting up one of the corridors came the musical hoots of Broonmark making himself at home in the storage bay he had chosen as his den. The half-psychotic Talz was not the sort of crewman Folcana had envisioned, but his prowess in combat was undeniable, and she'd known soon after meeting him that he was too mad and violent to leave drifting loose through the galaxy, and his help against the Republic's Talz commandos had been useful. Folcana couldn't bring herself to kill him, so she adopted the massive, furry alien and resolved to keep him on a tight leash.

Pierce abandoned his blaster cleaning when Vette sashayed over to him and wrapped her slender arms around his neck, kissing him on the cheek. Pierce turned in his seat and kissed her back, a long, lingering exchange. When they came up for air, Vette whispered something in his ear. He grinned and nodded. He got to his feet, and the pair made their way back to the quarters they now shared, hand in hand.

Pierce was the last man Folcana would have expected Vette to fall for, and she'd been a bit worried when Vette started sneaking into his room at night, but it ended up working out. For all of his rough edges Pierce was a gentleman, and unlike most Imperial troopers he had never displayed any bigotry towards aliens. Still, Folcana had initially been concerned that he would break her heart, that he would view Vette the way most human men saw Twi'lek women; fun and exotic, a great lay, but not a true partner. Her fears had been unfounded, though. She could sense that he genuinely cared about Vette, and she was deeply in love with him. They were good for each other, and in hindsight Folcana was glad she hadn't interfered in their romance.

Quinn looked up with a smile as she sat down next to him, pulling her legs up on the couch and resting against him. "Welcome back, Shen," he said warmly. She kissed him in response. Malavai was the only person in the galaxy who still used her real name, the only person she could _be_Shen with.

"It's good to be back. What's been happening in the galaxy while we were away?"

Quinn gave her a sober look and then used his datapad to bring up a tactical hologram on the main projector. "The Empire and Republic move ever closer to war. We're at war, really, but nothing's been declared yet. The Republic's so afraid of the domestic consequences of resuming the war that they're letting Imperial forces nibble at the fringes of their space, snapping up a few contested systems here and there, but the Dark Council is close to crossing a line the Republic will have no choice but to respond to."

"Baras is driving all of this, isn't he?" Shen asked quietly.

Malavai hesitated before nodding. "There were voices clamoring for renewed war before Darth Baras joined the council, but he's been effective at silencing those who were against it."

Sighing, Shen fished the data chips from her pocket containing the records she had recovered from the Imperial wrecks. "He'll use these to silence another dissenter, no doubt."

Quinn was silent for a moment, stroking her hair as she looked at the chips. He kissed her forehead, and then murmured, "Are you thinking about not sending them?"

Shen considered that and then shook her head. "You know he's waiting for me to fail. Looking for an excuse." Shen had told no one that she had killed Draagh, not even Malavai. She saw no point in muddling his loyalties; ultimately, his chain of command ended with Baras, and Shen knew how seriously he took his oath as an Imperial officer.

Draagh's death had done what Shen had hoped it would; Baras was left without an apprentice to replace her, and it would be some time yet before he was able to train or recruit another. Baras was a suspicious man by nature though, and even though he had no evidence that could disprove Shen's story that Draagh had fallen at Vengean's hand, he was paranoid enough to suspect her of foul play anyways. He rarely met with her in person anymore, and she knew he no longer trusted her as he once had. She had time to prepare for a confrontation with her master, but that confrontation was now unavoidable. That she knew.

Rising to her feet, Shen made her way to the main console, checking Dromund Kaas time. It was very late at night, and Baras would be asleep. Satisfied that she wouldn't have to talk to him, she inserted the data chips and uploaded the data to his secure archives. _One step closer to war._ Shen was far from a pacifist, and she hated Jedi as much as any Sith, but she didn't fully understand the drive for war in the Empire. They had enough trouble controlling recently conquered territories; she had been involved in putting down enough rebellions on Imperial worlds in the last span of years to understand that. Still, the Dark Council drove the Empire to war so that members could gain advantage over one another, and the Emperor sat silent on his throne. That last part bothered Shen the most. If she could see how destructive the internecine struggles of the Council were, surely he could!

Turning back to Quinn, Shen extended a hand, a smile crossing her face. "It's been a long day. Shall we turn in?" Putting aside his datapad, Quinn stood and followed her into the captain's cabin. The door hissed shut behind them, and Quinn's arms slid around her waist. She felt his breath on her cheek, shivering as he trailed kisses down her neck.

"I've missed this, trekking halfway across this miserable ball of ice," Shen said contentedly, turning to face Malavai and kissing him lingeringly. "I thought I'd never be warm again, even with those armor mods."

"Mmm. Let's see what I can do about that," Quinn replied, undoing the knot of her robe's sash and slipping his hands under the smooth fabric to caress her skin. Shen let the robe fall off of her shoulders. Her skin continued to grow paler and the dark marks of Force use more prominent, but she'd invested in synthflesh for her prosthetics that matched her actual skin tone, so her whole body matched now, at least.

They kissed again, Shen's hands working to divest Quinn of his garments as he did the same. When they were both unclothed, they dived into the warm bed.

* * *

Shen woke with a start. She lay in bed, Quinn's warm body resting against her back, his arms around her. The cabin was lit with pale blue light from the viewport as Hoth's morning sunlight filtered down through the ice. Shen winced at the nausea twisting in her gut that had awoken her. Extricating herself from Quinn's arms she dove out of bed and into the refresher, barely making it in time to vomit her stomach's contents into the toilet. Coughing up the last of the bile, Shen wiped her mouth, wincing at the bitter taste and caustic sensation. Opening the sink's tap, she filled a glass with water and washed her mouth out.

When she looked up, she saw Quinn standing behind her in the refresher's open door, concern on his face. "Are you all right, Shen?"

Sighing, she leaned against the wall and nodded. "I'm fine, just some local bug I picked up. I've been a bit fatigued and nauseous at times for the last week or so. I should have listened to you when we landed." Seeing a faintly smug look on her captain's face, she glared at him. "Yeah, laugh it up."

"I'm sorry Shen, what was it you said? 'Sith have the Force; we don't need medicines'?" Shen growled and took a half-hearted swat at him as he backed out of range. When they had arrived, Quinn had vaccinated the rest of the crew with a standard spectrum booster keyed to Hoth's local bugs. Shen had declined it, certain that her armor and natural vitality would be sufficient protection. She had been proven wrong a few days after leaving the Imperial base when she started getting tired more easily and had trouble keeping food down in the mornings.

"Come here," Quinn said, sitting her down on the edge of the bed before opening a dresser drawer in the wall and removing his diagnostic equipment.

"Oh, I don't need a checkup Malavai," she said in protest, half rising to her feet. "I'll be fine."

"Sit down," he said firmly. Shen blinked in surprise. "You ignored my advice once and now you're sick. Let me do my job. I have to make sure this isn't anything serious, and I have to determine if whatever you picked up is a hazard to the crew or our next port of call before we can leave Hoth."

Seeing Quinn's "serious business" face, Shen nodded and sat back down. "Okay, I'll be good," she said meekly, prompting a snort of amusement from Quinn as he began scanning her, a pair of hovering drones popping free of the diagnostic kit and orbiting around her as he worked.

He was working for a few minutes before he frowned at something and started tapping away at the diagnostic controls. Then Quinn's face paled. Shen sensed shock and confusion in his Force aura. "What is it?" she asked.

"Shen you… you're not sick…" he said slowly.

"What do you mean? Of course I'm-"

"You're pregnant."

Shen just stared at him. Her mind stalled trying to process that statement. "That's impossible. You know that's impossible! I can't get pregnant; my reproductive system was damaged beyond repair in the accident on Tyrin III." The best Imperial surgeons on Tyrin III had explained it to her; they'd had to remove one ovary entirely, the other was battered and nonfunctional, and her womb was so badly damaged as to make conception impossible.

"I've seen the scans and conclusions of your doctors at that time and their diagnosis was correct, but what I'm seeing now doesn't match those old scans. Your uterus no longer has any of the scar tissue present at that time, and your remaining ovary is fully healed and functional." He showed her the diagnostic scan's results, and she looked wide-eyed at holograms of organs that had somehow healed on their own, and a minute glowing dot that represented the life growing inside of her. "You're approximately one month pregnant," Quinn said. Shen saw his cheeks color slightly, and felt herself blushing as she remembered what they'd been doing a month ago, "celebrating" a successful mission on Quesh.

Shen's vision blurred and she was startled to realize she was crying. She buried her face in her hands, struggling with all the emotions welling up inside her. A moment later Quinn's arms were around her. She buried her face in his chest, sobbing. "I love you, Shen. I will be there for you, whatever you decide." As her numb mind processed that statement, she understood his meaning, and fear clamped down on her heart. With all the demands, danger and precariousness of her current situation, if this was a bad time to be involved in a relationship, it was an _insane_ time to have a baby. Baras could very well move against her before a child would be born. From a coldly rational Sith point of view, the answer was simple: end the pregnancy. Quinn could do it with a drug or a shot and no one else would ever know; she would never be vulnerable.

But even as the thought occurred to her, Shen's mind recoiled from it. She couldn't bear to consider it. Her memory of her past had been ravaged by Grendil Torbaane, but she could remember being almost as devastated by the news that she would never have a child as finding out her family was gone. "I can't," she murmured against Quinn's chest. She leaned back to look at him, eyes glistening with tears. "I can't give up this chance. It has to be fate, or the Force, or a message. I want to have this child."

Malavai gripped her shoulders, looking her in the eye. "Shen, do you understand what carrying a pregnancy to term will entail for a cyborg as heavily mechanical as you are?" When she shook her head, he continued. "The fatigue you're feeling will get progressively worse as the child grows; by the third trimester you'll probably be bedridden. You'll lose muscle mass, and your diet will have to be monitored closely to avoid complications." Like most heavily cybernetic humans, Shen's digestive system couldn't handle solid food anymore; her diet had consisted of protein shakes, juices and liquid nutritional supplements since the accident.

Quinn sighed. "You're very close to the Ruytin Threshold; being a Sith may help mitigate some of the problems, but you will still experience them."

"What is the Ruytin Threshold?" Shen asked.

"It's the point past which there isn't enough of a woman's original body left to carry a pregnancy to term safely; the point where she won't survive the pregnancy. Take Cyl for instance; at 52% cyborg she's capable of conceiving, but she'd have to abort the pregnancy; it would kill her otherwise. At 35% cyborg you're dangerously close to the line."

"You're saying I could die."

Quinn shook his head. "The risk is there, but what I'm trying to tell you is that this will weaken you a great deal. Would Cyl hold back if she knew you couldn't defend yourself adequately? Would Baras?"

Shen felt a chill run through her as she contemplated that. "Baras… after the next mission, if I request leave he'll grant it. He doesn't trust me to hang around Dromund Kaas anyways. I can hide it from him."

"And Cyl?"

Shen thought about it and then pounded her fist on the bed in frustration. "Cyl's a problem. I can't avoid her for nine months; she'd figure it out." Shen was thankful that Cyl was away on a mission, hunting a pair of runaway apprentices from Korriban who had been the ringleaders of a group of students secretly practicing light side techniques, but she'd be back soon. "I'd kill her, but that would make Baras suspicious. He'd want an answer I can't give him." She looked at Quinn, fear in her eyes. "What am I going to do? Keeping her alive was stupid. I should have left her to die on Hutta."

"Why? You'd still have an apprentice waiting for a moment of weakness by now, even if it wasn't Cyl." Quinn kissed her forehead. "We'll figure it out. I may have an idea; I'll need to do some research. You should try to eat once the nausea fades."

Nodding, Shen got to her feet, pausing as a realization hit her. "Oh, Malavai… I've been so self-absorbed I didn't even ask what you think of all this!"

Quinn stood before her, clasping her hands in his. "I'll admit this unexpected for me, too. I'm not sure it's really sunk in yet that I'm going to be a father, and I think I'll be worried for you every day now." With that he embraced her. "But for all that, right now I'm happy. I can't think of anyone I'd rather have a child with than you, Shen. We will get through this, stronger than ever. I know it."

"Thank you," she whispered. "I don't know if I could do this without you."

Hours later Shen and Quinn sat together in bed, side by side. Both were reading their datapads; Shen looking up maternity information for cyborgs after setting up an anonymous connection to the Holonet, Quinn researching whatever he had decided to look up.

"Well there's one mystery solved," Malavai murmured. When Shen looked at him curiously, he showed her what he had been looking at. It was a record from a Sith archive of a data disc obtained during a raid on a Jedi outpost on an Outer Rim world years earlier. It detailed a Jedi healer's study into the regenerative abilities of Force sensitives from species that did not traditionally possess the ability to regrow lost limbs and organs. The study found that in rare cases, certain individuals with powerful connections to the Force could regrow damaged tissue that members of their species were not normally capable of replacing.

"interesting… but why didn't I know about this?" Shen wondered aloud.

"The author emphasized how rare the ability it was; it's innate to a small percentage of Force users; the Sith have never documented any cases of it. It's probable that no one knew." Quinn flipped to another holo on his datapad. "As for a solution to the problem Cyl poses, what about this?"

Shen looked at what Quinn was showing her and blinked. "A bounty hunter? Cyl's already dispatched a few of those that light side Sith have sent to kill her."

"Not just a bounty hunter; a Mandalorian, and a winner of the Great Hunt. He's faced Sith and won."

"I don't know that I want Cyl dead."

"Then he's perfect for the job. This hunter tends to take challenging jobs that involve live capture."

"Really," Shen said, looking over the hunter's profile with new interest. He was a Chiss male in his early thirties who had only been active in Imperial space for a few years, but had quickly risen from collecting debts for Nem'ro the Hutt to competing in and winning the last Great Hunt, capping off an impressive string of captures by gunning down a Jedi Master and blowing up his frigate. "All right. Set up a meeting with him."

"Of course."

* * *

_Nar Shaddaa_

The Broken Barve probably wasn't the seediest cantina on the Smuggler's Moon, but Folcana wasn't anxious to find one that could top it. The establishment was in Nar Shaddaa's lower depths, close to the bedrock. Just in travelling the few kilometers from the nearest Imperial outpost to the Broken Barve, Folcana had been forced to dispatch a pack of vrblthers and a mugger dumb enough or high enough on spice to attack a Sith. Now she sat in a darkened booth waiting for the bounty hunter to show, glad that her hermetically sealed armor protected her from the no doubt delightful smells and narcotic haze in the air. Looking at the state of the booths seating, Folcana vowed to burn the cloak she wore over her armor before returning to the _Fury_.

A few minutes later the cantina's entryway was filled by a walking wall of Mandalorian armor. Even the hardest-looking cantina denizens gave him a wide berth as he looked around, and then headed for Folcana's booth. She had time to observe him as he approached. Like her he wore head to toe body armor, but the style was very different. It was white with red trim, and his helmet had a single fin rising above the "Y" shaped visor. He had expensive, top of the line blasters, one on each hip. He lacked the trophies that Mandalorians of his reputation usually carried; his armor wasn't festooned with Wookie scalps or other alien body parts. She wondered if that had anything to do with the fact that he was an alien himself, an expatriate of the Chiss Ascendancy.

"You're the hunter known as Vale?" she asked once he had sat down.

"I am. You're the Sith who contacted me?" His voice was a deep bass.

"I don't see any other Sith in this bar," Folcana said dryly. When he didn't respond she continued. "Yes, I am."

"What's the job?" he asked.

"You're not fond of small talk, are you?" Folcana asked. Silence again. "Before we discuss the job we need to discuss confidentiality."

Vale shrugged. "I can't guarantee I'll take the job until I know what it is, but I can guarantee I won't discuss what passes between us today. Think of me like an attorney. You pay me, I represent your interests. I just skip the courtroom and go straight to the sentence."

"All right, that's fair enough," Folcana conceded, placing a data chip on the table. Vale picked it up and slipped it into a receiver on his forearm. "Her name is Cyl. She's a Sith apprentice. I need her taken alive and placed in carbonite stasis."

Vale ejected the chip and put it on the table, then shook his head. "I don't do Sith internal rivalries. You got a target who isn't swinging a red lightsaber, we can talk."

"I'm sorry, I was told that you were the best; that you took on a Jedi Master and won," Folcana said caustically. "Obviously your reputation is inflated."

Vale stiffened, then leaned forward, jabbing a finger in Folcana's face. "I operate in Imperial space, Sith. That means I follow Imperial rules. Getting along with the neighbors makes life easier, you see? That means I don't take contracts on Sith unless they're renegades. The target you've given me isn't a renegade, or you'd be meeting me in the Imperial base, not in a groundside cantina."

Vale started to get up. "There won't be any official retaliation," Folcana said heavily.

Vale glanced over his shoulder. "How can you guarantee that?"

_In for a decicred, in for a kilo,_ Folcana thought. "I'm her master. I won't be coming after you," she explained.

He stared at her for a moment and then sat back down. "I was under the impression that Sith displeased with their apprentices just killed them. Or is this Cyl stronger than you?" It was a dig, meant to get back at her for questioning his bravery, and Folcana didn't rise to the bait.

"If I wanted her dead she'd be dead. I just need her out of action for a while in a manner that can't be traced back to me." Folcana leaned back in her seat. "She may choose to pursue you after her release, but I trust you can handle that."

Vale was silent for a long moment. "I see. You're not afraid of her; you just want her out of the way until your kid is born." Folcana tensed, her hand drifting down to her lightsaber. Vale noticed, spreading his hands inoffensively. "Was I not supposed to know that? In the future, seal your armor before you put on your outer garments, and don't wear anything that you've been in contact with unless it's been washed. Otherwise your pheromones give you away to anyone with a bio-sniffer," he said, tapping the side of his helmet.

Folcana forced herself to relax. "I see. Thanks for the tip."

"Free of charge." He looked at her for a moment. "All right, I'll do this for you."

Folcana placed another data chip on the table. "That contains the coordinates of a planet she'll be visiting in a week's time, the transponder ID of the shuttle she'll be travelling in, and the first half of your fee. I'll deliver the rest when you deliver Cyl in a slab of carbonite."

Vale picked up the chip, inserted it into his reader and nodded. "You'll hear from me soon, then." With that, the bounty hunter got up and left the cantina. Folcana waited a few minutes before departing herself.

* * *

_The Fury_

From the viewport of her quarters, Folcana watched Vale's boxy D-5 Mantis loop away from the _Fury_ and vanish into hyperspace. The hunter had been as good as advertised. With a satisfied smile, she glanced at the recessed alcove that now had a new adornment: a carbonite slab hovering in a magnetic field, her alabaster skinned apprentice frozen within. Most people frozen in carbonite had distorted facial expressions. Cyl, having no face, looked the same as usual. Only her body language conveyed anger and fear from her last moments before the bounty hunter put her in stasis.

Tapping the controls beside the alcove, Folcana brought the concealing panel sliding down, hiding the carbonite slab. It would only open for her biometrics, and was structured to look like part of the wall.

"Look at it this way Cyl; it's just for a few years," Folcana murmured to herself, before heading off to see what Quinn was up to.

* * *

_Author's Note: Vale (the core name of Jake'valen'ce) is a Chiss mercenary healer and was my main character until I left Old Republic._


	11. Expecting

**Chapter Eleven: Expecting**

* * *

_Zonju V_, _Wild Space_

"From this day forth, you shall be known as Shen and Malavai Quinn. May your union be blessed and your future bright." The old man speaking the benediction wore long, flowing robes of pale blue, and a scarlet scarf wrapped around his neck, its trails falling down his back. He was a local ecclesial leader of Zonju V's major brand of faith, and while neither Shen nor Malavai were particularly religious, the house of worship they stood in was beautiful and standing together, looking each other in the eye, it just felt _right_.

"You may kiss the bride," the old man continued. Quinn, looking handsome in a finely tailored black civilian suit smiled warmly at her. Lifting the thick veil Shen wore, he gave her a long, lingering kiss. He was careful to put his face between Shen and the priest, to hide her cybernetics and the black marks of dark side use from his sight. Even far from Imperial space they had to be cautious.

Shen, wearing an ornate dress of pure white with long hanging sleeves and shawl in the local fashion, kissed him back. The dress was form fitting enough to show the swell of her stomach, but it didn't bother her that it was obvious the conception of her child predated the marriage. She had traveled through the Outer Rim into Wild Space with Quinn, Vette and Pierce for several months before deciding to settle on Zonju V to bear her child. Feeling the life growing within her was a daily source of joy for Shen, and she didn't care what anyone on the frontier world thought. Her child would be born with a father, a family. That was all that mattered.

Behind Shen, Vette stood holding a bouquet of local flowers, dressed in a demure gown of green fabric, a headpiece of worked metal gracing her brow. Pierce was at Quinn's side, wearing a suit of his own that obviously made him uncomfortable. Like Shen, he had worn armor for most of his adult life; civilian dress had been an adjustment for both of them. Shen, who couldn't remember the last time she'd worn dresses thanks to Grendil Torbaane, would have been lost without Vette to help her with a new wardrobe.

Leaving the house of worship after thanking the priest and leaving a donation, the four made their way outside. Shen found herself leaning on Quinn's arm, and he supported her unobtrusively. He hadn't exaggerated about the toll the pregnancy would take on her body, now in its fifth month. Even standing and walking for the hour or so it had taken to get married had left Shen tired. Being so weak was disconcerting and a little frightening for Shen, who had grown used to possessing superhuman stamina.

Outside, a speeder limo waited. Shen and Quinn climbed in the back, while Pierce and Vette headed for the high performance speeder they had arrived in. After Cyl had been neutralized, Shen and Quinn had filled Vette and Pierce in on the plan; to avoid Baras or any Imperial scrutiny until Shen's child was born. Vette and Pierce both took the need to protect Shen quite seriously, falling into the role of bodyguards naturally.

The city of Zoronhed was the largest settlement on Zonju V, an unaligned world in Wild Space. Zoronhed was small by galactic standards, less than a million people, and the planet's entire population of about four million would be lost in single neighborhoods on a Core world. But Zonju V's isolation was ideal for a pregnant Sith avoiding her master until her child was born. The conflicts between the Empire and Republic were something happening elsewhere, and of less concern than the weather to the people of Zonju V.

Watching the people of Zoronhed on the streets as they headed for the town's outskirts, Shen reflected on their temporary home. Other than its isolation – far from the main star lanes – Zonju V had made sense as a destination for other reasons. The human settlers of Zonju V tended towards a light brown skin tone not dissimilar to Shen's after years of dark side use, and women tended to wear heavy veils that obscured the face, which were both practical on a world with frequent sand and dust storms, as well as encouraged by the local faith. For Shen, it meant being able to go out in public without her smoldering red eyes and black veins giving her away as a dark side Force user. A little work on faking the local Basic accent and she blended in. Her husband, an obvious offworlder, got more attention than she did, especially since they allowed everyone to believe that he was the one with enough money to purchase the estate on the outskirts of town that their speeder limo was pulling up to. Vette, one of the few Twi'leks on Zonju V, got a lot of attention as well, but as long as no one thought of Shen as anything but a local who married well, they were safe.

Glancing at Quinn, Shen saw him looking back at her. "What are you thinking, husband?" saying that word sent a little thrill through her.

"How beautiful you are," he replied.

"Flatterer," she said with a laugh, running a hand over her stomach's bump. "I'm getting as big as a nerf."

"Never. I mean it," he said, moving closer to her and lifting the veil from her face, kissing her deeply. "Seeing our child grow within you only makes you more lovely to me, Shen."

It amazed Shen that her black heart, stained with so much death, could still soar when Malavai - _my husband - _said things like that.

"I was surprised you wanted to take my name," Quinn continued. "I never expected it."

Shen nodded. "It's tradition here, and tradition on Tyrin III. More to the point, I wanted to do it." The speeder limo pulled up to their door, and Quinn helped Shen out of the vehicle. She leaned heavily on him as they walked up the path. "I hate this. I've never been this weak in my life."

Quinn hugged her briefly. "Soon it will be over, and our child will have the strongest Sith Lord in the Empire for a mother."

Inside the manor, local servants and droids welcomed them back. Vette and Pierce joined them, and they sat down to dinner, to celebrate.

* * *

Exhausted, bathed in sweat and wracked with fading pain, Shen held out trembling arms as the Emdee droid stepped up to her bedside and handed her a blanket-wrapped bundle. Fingers trembling from fatigue brushed the tiny face that gazed up at her, large brown eyes liquid in the soft light.

Machines hummed and beeped around Shen's bed, Life support monitors tracking her body's vitals constantly, an IV in her arm feeding nutrients to her wasted body. She knew she looked a mess, her face slightly gaunt.

The last three months had been hell on Shen. True to Quinn's warnings, it wasn't long after their wedding that Shen's stamina declined to the point that trips to the refresher had become exhausting. Her appetite had vanished, and eating enough for herself and her child had become an effort of will. Her labor had lasted almost two days, and the birthing had been difficult and painful. But now, holding her son in her arms, it was all worth it.

Shen looked up at Quinn, who was adjusting the controls on the machine that regulated the blend of fluids going into her body. He looked haggard from lack of sleep. "Our son," she said softly.

Quinn turned and crouched beside her bed, gripping her hand. "Zane." Shen nodded. They had decided on the name for a boy months ago. It had been her brother's name, although after what Grendil Torbaane had done to her, she'd had to look him up in Imperial records to remind herself who he had been.

"I love you," Shen said.

Quinn's answer was lost in a deep explosion that shook the whole estate. Looking out the window, Shen saw uniformed Imperial troopers storming into the estate, opening fire on servants and droids alike. Fear seized her, and she pushed through her exhaustion, extending her Force senses. She shuddered when she felt a massive Force presence nearby. "It's Baras," Shen whispered. She held Zane out to Quinn, who took the child in his arms. "Quinn, you have to get Zane out of here."

Malavai didn't answer immediately. Brushing sweat-soaked hair from Shen's brow, he kissed her forehead and then rose to his feet, a peculiar expression of regret crossing his expression. "That won't be necessary, Shen." Before she could ask what he meant, Quinn shifted Zane into a one-handed grip by his side, drawing his blaster from his hip and leveling it as Shen's chest. "I'm sorry, my love." His finger tightened on the trigger.

At another time Shen could have yanked the blaster from his grip with the Force. She could have deflected a blaster bolt away from her body, or absorbed it with an energy transference technique. At full strength she could have simply resisted the waves of blue energy that washed over her body, but carrying Zane to term had drained her reserves. With no time to recover, Shen had only a moment of horrified incomprehension before her husband's stun bolt sent her falling into blackness.

* * *

Quinn was still standing over Shen's bed when a pair of armored figures entered the room. The short, bulky form of Darth Baras, clad in ornate armor, was followed by the slender, simple alabaster form of Cyl.

Taking in the tableau, Baras laughed. "Well done, Captain Quinn. Well done indeed."

"Thank you, my Lord," the captain replied quietly in a voice dead of emotion. Both of the Sith could feel the sadness and regret in Quinn's Force aura as he looked down at his unconscious wife. Cyl snorted in contempt, but was silenced by Baras' raised hand.

The stout dark side savant stepped forward, placing a hand on Quinn's shoulder. "I knew I could count on you, captain. I know this wasn't easy for you. Your loyalty is to be commended."

"What will happen to her, my Lord?" Quinn asked.

"I had intended to end her life, but my new apprentice has convinced me to be merciful," Baras said, sweeping a hand toward Cyl. Quinn glanced at the faceless cyborg, whose body language conveyed her malicious amusement. Quinn suspected that whatever the former Jedi had planned for Shen could not be described as "mercy", but he forced himself not to think about it, or feel it. He was hanging onto composure by a fingernail. He wondered how Shen had failed to sense his inner turmoil over the last few months, but to be fair Baras had trained him well on concealing his emotions even from Force adepts. He was making full use of that training now, hiding his grief and fury from his employer for putting him in this impossible situation. His heart was a lead weight in his chest. He longed to do something, but he couldn't protect Shen from this. He could only protect their child.

"Our deal?" Quinn asked, schooling his features into an impassive mask before looking at Baras.

The portly Sith patted his back. "Of course, my boy. You have served me well, and I bear no ill will to your son. He is yours to raise as you see fit, and if he grows to possess his mother's strength, he will be assured a place among the Sith elite. You have my word."

With Baras' arm around his shoulder, Quinn and his employer left Shen's bedroom behind. From the corner of his eye, he saw Cyl step up to Shen's bedside. Inside his marvelously trained mind, Quinn firmly shut every door that lead to the wife he walked away from, willing himself not to care what fate Shen was likely to face at the hands of her vengeful and deranged former apprentice.

In the foyer, Imperial troops stood at attention. A number of soldiers' corpses were scattered around the room, dead from blaster and vibroblade strikes. The hulking, furry body of the Talz Broonmark lay on the ground as well, smoking from the dozen blaster wounds and the pair of lightsaber strikes it had taken to put him down. A cluster of soldiers surrounded two prisoners on their knees with their hands in binders behind their backs. Vette and Pierce glared at Quinn as he passed. Vette spat at his feet, with earned her a kick from a trooper's armored boot that sent her sprawling on the floor. Pierce tried to climb to his feet, but was clubbed down with rifle butts.

Darth Baras, noticing the scuffle, chuckled. "Those three were amazingly effective. Losses were heavy enough that Cyl had to step in. It's a shame they can't be subverted." Quinn shrugged, forcing himself not to care. Beside what he had just done the woman he had sworn to protect and cherish just months earlier, what did Vette and Pierce matter? Baras and Quinn left the manor and boarded a shuttle headed for the cruiser in orbit.


	12. Betrayal and Balance

**Chapter Twelve: Betrayal and Balance**

_Belsavis, Six years later_

Belsavis had been the Republic's best-kept secret for centuries after its rediscovery: a treasure trove of Rakata artifacts and technology, as well as home to a number of ancient Rakata-built vaults and prisons. It was the latter that made the isolated planet so important to the Republic after the outbreak of hostilities with the Sith, for the Rakata had built prisons designed to contain powerful Force users, and their designs combined with the Sith Empire's lack of knowledge of the world's location had made Belsavis valuable as a secure jail for Sith prisoners of war.

All of that had changed when the Imperial spy network ferreted out the location of Belsavis during the period of uneasy peace that followed the sacking of Coruscant. When the peace ended, Belsavis was among the first targets of the Imperial military. Taken by surprise, the Republic forces in orbit were quickly overwhelmed and destroyed. The substantial Republic presence on the ground, though, was not so easily dislodged. Belsavis' rift valleys formed natural defenses, the Republic's soldiers were well entrenched, and Republic engineers had had centuries to subvert the Rakata droids and automated defenses of Belsavis, bringing the powerful constructs under their control.

The Empire took control of a number of rift valleys initially, freeing many of their imprisoned brethren, and fought a brutal ground war for control of the remaining vaults and prisons. Far more reckless than the Republic's archaeologists, the Imperial Reclamation Service was aggressive in breaching uncovered vaults, finding sometimes powerful new weapons or allies, other times unearthing horrors buried by the Rakata ages ago.

As Imperial control of their central rift valleys was secured, the Empire started using the old Rakata prisons for the same purpose as the Republic had; incarcerating powerful Force-sensitive prisoners.

* * *

The Rakata prison designated UltraMax Cell Block 14-R by its Imperial owners and "Hot House" by the troopers and guards who watched over its inmates is the most secure on the planet. To reach the levels where the prisoners were kept, one first has to be a skilled pilot. The prison's only entrance is located in a twisting, turning vertical shaft a hundred meters wide and two kilometers deep that opens on the slope of an active volcano. The bottom of the shaft is a pool of bubbling magma, heated and fed by the volcano. Lava tubes honeycomb the sides of the shaft, oozing molten rock often enough to make it impossible to run turbolift shafts down from the surface. The only way to reach the prison's entrance – nestled in a cavern branching off from the shaft a few hundred meters above the lava pool – is to fly a shuttle straight down the shaft, dealing with the updrafts from the magma and crosswinds from the lava tubes the whole way, trying to avoid being thrown into the jagged rock formations that lined the walls.

Anyone trying to break into the Hot House will face the added challenge of avoiding the dozens of house-sized war droids that clung to the walls of the shaft like massive barnacles. Mobile enough to avoid the occasional lava flow, the droids otherwise sit still most of the time, laser cannons and missile launchers primed and ready to destroy any vessel attempting to ascend or descend the shaft without the proper clearance codes and transponders.

If the descent is made safely, visitors can reach the landing pads in the cavern entrance. Turbolaser turrets set into the ceiling await uninvited visitors. From the landing pad, arriving prisoners and guards reach the first set of barrier doors on the far side of the cavern. Massing more than a small starship and cast from a metal harder than durasteel, the gates open onto a long tunnel stretching deeper into the volcano. Half a kilometer in the walls change from Rakata metal to ancient force fields as the tunnel extends into the main magma chamber of the volcano, where the prison itself is located. The Hot House is a prison buried under countless tons of molten rock. Inside there are fewer than two hundred cells. Each one has a wall or roof on the outside of the prison, the magma held back only by a force field. From the prison's control center in the heart of the structure, the prison's masters can shut down any individual cell wall and flood the cell with liquid rock in an instant. The prison's control center can also shut down the force fields in the entry tunnel and flood the only path connecting the prison to the outside. The Hot House is in short, impregnable. This makes it the destination for the Empire's most high-value and dangerous prisoners.

* * *

The Corellian XS Stock Light Freighter _Red Claw_ plunged down through Belsavis' atmosphere; the front end of the ship glowing red as the vessel's enhanced shields absorbed the heat of re-entry. The pilot of the ship was a member of a species not commonly seen outside of the Corellia system, a Selonian. A member of the caste of sterile females that served as the Selonian people's connection to the galaxy outside the warrens, Casteia was a striking example of her race, the jet black fur that covered her body smooth and glossy, her eyes a brilliant sapphire blue with midnight black slit pupils. In deference to her human and near-human companions she wore simple spacer's garb, a vest with multiple pockets for tools and weapons, and trousers held up by a blaster belt.

"Are we seriously trying to break into the most secure prison in the Empire because one old Jedi had a vision?" the stout Miralian woman in trooper's armor who occupied the copilot's seat asked conversationally as she monitored the shields.

"No Shorlee," the Selonian answered. "We're breaking into the most secure Imperial prison in the galaxy because 'one old Jedi' was going to make the attempt with or without us, and we all owe him our lives, so we're helping. Now get on the sensors and start picking out the Imperial defense nodes. According to Intel this place has lots of teeth." Once the burn of atmospheric re-entry faded, Casteia guided the ship in a steep dive toward the smoking volcano kilometers below. Flipping a switch, the Selonian addressed her passengers. "Gree, Lim'ba, are you ready on those guns?"

"Ready and waiting," came the calm, quiet voice of the human male Jedi sage in the dorsal laser turret.

"Where are the targets?" was the hard, eager reply of the female Twi'lek sentinel in the ventral laser turret.

"You'll see them soon," Casteia replied before switching the comm over to the passenger compartment. "Master Foll Tac, we'll be in range of the prison's defenses in less than a minute."

"Then I shall begin," came the muffled, half-mechanical voice of the elderly male Kel Dor Jedi Master.

The Jedi Gree and Lim'ba took part in the first stage, slipping easily into a Force battle meld with Foll Tac as they had dozens of times before. Bolstered by the link, the old Kel Dor fell into a trance, and extended his awareness to fill the freighter, wrapping his consciousness around the vessel's other occupants.

Unlike the legendary Bastila Shan, Master Foll Tac's skill with battle meditation wasn't enough to augment an entire fleet, but a single fighter squadron or a small ship like the _Red Claw_ was within his ability. Casteia and Shorlee shivered as they felt the Force ability sweep over them, focusing their minds and linking them to their Jedi passengers.

When the surface communications relay that connected the prison to the Imperial forces in orbit came into range, Casteia fired a pair of missiles into the antenna, slagging it before the prison could call for help. When the Imperial surface batteries dotting the slope of the volcano opened fire in retaliation, Casteia was ready, guiding the freighter through a dizzying series of loops, rolls and other maneuvers that left the tracking algorithms of the laser cannons below outclassed. In the moments when her flight path stabilized, Gree and Lim'ba returned fire with pinpoint accuracy, vaporizing defensive guns. The dark maw of the descent shaft loomed before them, and Casteia plunged the freighter nose-first into the chasm, engines screaming.

Imperial ships bearing prisoners could descend on repulsors, a slower but safer means of reaching the prison. But for the _Red Claw_, flying straight down the throat of the volcano was the only option. The war droids lining the walls of the shaft opened fire as soon as the freighter came into sight. Casteia put the ship into a dizzying spin to make its discus profile a harder target, but with the narrow walls and wind forcing her to maintain a relatively straight path she couldn't dodge everything, and the Selonian winced as missiles and laser blasts exploded against the shields. Shorlee managed the power output from the ship's reactor, reinforcing the shields. The Jedi in the turrets returned fire, blasting the hulking droids apart, their carcasses falling down the tube, creating obstacles for Casteia.

Spotting a thick cluster of droids rapidly approaching, Casteia dropped a series of green boxes over their images on her display and let loose with a quartet of concussion missiles, blasting them apart and flying through the debris cloud, incoming fire from above tapering off as the surviving droids lost their target locks.

When the cavern entrance came into sight, Casteia rolled the freighter upright, bringing the repulsors to full power as she cut back on the engines. When the ship dipped below the mouth of the cavern she fired another round of missiles into the cavern roof, blowing apart the turbolaser batteries before flying inside, dodging falling rock and debris. The Jedi raked the remaining defenses and guards with laser bolts as Casteia set the freighter down on a landing pad clear of debris. By the time the ship touched ground, the landing bay was silent.

Casteia put the ship on standby and programmed the laser turrets to open fire on anything following them through the cave's entrance. Then she rose from her seat in a fluid movement, checking her blaster's charge as Shorlee put on her helmet. They left the cockpit, and joined the three Jedi at the top of the boarding ramp.

The sage Gree was a heavyset man with styled blond hair that fell over one eye and piercing green eyes. Raised in the Jedi Temple from infancy, his weight had earned him the nickname "Hungry" as a child and Padawan, a moniker he accepted with grace. The sentinel Lim'ba was a contrast to Gree, a skinny blue-skinned Twi'lek woman with hard eyes and a mouth twisted into an expression of irritation. Horizontal stripes were tattooed across her cheeks and the backs of her lekku, slave marks carved into her body on a remote world in the Outer Rim where she was born and raised before a Jedi survey team found and rescued her as a teenager. The two younger Jedi protectively flanked their master, Foll Tac. The elderly Kel Dor leaned on a simple wooden cane, his body wizened with age. Lim'ba and Shorlee, rifle slung across her chest, took point, while Casteia and Gree took position behind Foll Tac as the quintet made their way to the first gate. The doors were hard enough to resist the _Red Claw's_ weapons, but not the power of three Force-linked Jedi. Foll Tac raised one wrinkled hand and gestured. The two massive doors reluctantly slid open with a deafening screech.

The squad of Imperial troopers on the other side of the door opened fire through the gap. Shorlee and Casteia returned fire with their blasters, while Lim'ba's twin purple blades snapped to life and she leapt into the midst of the troopers, a violet whirlwind of death. Gree activated his single green lightsaber and stepped in front of Foll Tac, calmly deflecting any bolts traveling in their direction away from his master.

In seconds the Imperials were down, and the party stepped through the gate into the tunnel. Foll Tac allowed the doors to close behind them. Ahead, two figures approached, one in heavy dark red robes, the other in plain gray power armor. Both drew lightsabers from their belts, crimson blades springing to life.

"You two look a bit outnumbered," Lim'ba taunted the pair of Sith. The robed sorcerer, a Rattataki, got a nasty smile on his face and gestured at a section of the wall, which slid back to reveal four heavy battle droids. Their photoreceptors glowed red as they trundled out of the alcove, training blasters on the Republic group.

"Oh thank you, that helped," Shorlee said sarcastically to Lim'ba.

"Stop whining and break them," Lim'ba replied before leaping at the gray-armored juggernaut, a tall Sith pureblood woman twice Lim'ba's size who met her charge head-on without budging an inch.

The Rattataki sorcerer extended a hand and sent a spray of crackling purple lightning at the group. Gree stepped into the path of the attack once more, this time letting the blast play over the invisible edges of a shield surrounding his body. When the torrent of energy faded, Gree retaliated with a telekinetic blast that sent the sorcerer stumbling back a few steps.

Shorlee powered up her personal shield generator and charged the droids, opening fire on full auto, her heavier blaster bolts pitting armor and tearing off droid limbs as Casteia's lighter blaster pistol sent bolt after bolt into the droid's vulnerable photoreceptors with surgical precision. Foll Tac gestured with both hands, and the two war droids in the rear rose up in the air before slamming into each other with a shower of sparks and screeching of metal. When they fell, they were a single, unrecognizable piece of wreckage.

The duel between Lim'ba and the Sith juggernaut was a flashing lightshow of crimson and violet energy as the petite Twi'lek bounced around like a hyperkinetic shockball. Her Sith opponent was driven back step by step, until she missed a parry. The pureblood lost a foot, an arm and then her head in the time it takes to blink. While the decapitated corpse was falling to the floor, Lim'ba turned and hurled one of her lightsabers at the Rattataki sorcerer's back, who had been engaged in a furious battle will with Gree, lightning, small stones and pure Force energy flashing back and forth between the pair as the stood twenty yards apart. The sorcerer deflected Lim'ba's lightsaber with a wave of his hand, but it distracted him long enough for Gree to nail him with a telekinetic blast that sent the Rattataki flying into the wall with bone-shattering force. The unfortunate sorcerer's corpse fell to the floor, a bloody outline on the wall marking his point of impact.

The last functional droid fell to Shorlee's onslaught, and the fight was over. Returning their lightsabers to their belts, Gree and Lim'ba rejoined the others, and they continued on their way down the hall.

Watching the unfolding battle with disbelief on holocams from the prison's control center, Commander Rustin Baale of the Imperial Corrections Force swore as the pair of Sith Lords and cadre of droids that formed the prison's last active line of defense dropped and the Republic raiders ran deeper into the facility. "Does the Fleet know we're under attack?" Baale demanded of his sweating communications officer.

"Unknown, sir," the young lieutenant replied. "The surface defenses may have gotten an automated distress call off before they destroyed the relay on the volcano's slope, but there's no way to know until reinforcements show up – or don't."

"Damn it. I guess we won't be leaving anytime soon, then," Commander Baale said with a sigh, pulling up the prison's force field controls.

"Sir? Are we-" the lieutenant asked nervously as he saw what the commander was doing.

"We'll be all right, son. The prison's fully self-contained and we have plenty of supplies. We'll just be cut off from communication until the Reclamation Service purges the tunnel from the other side." With that, Baale keyed in the last set of commands and his personal authorization codes.

The five Republic intruders tensed when massive Rakata Force screens sprang to life in front of and behind them, trapping them in a section of the corridor that was lit by the bright orange glow of molten rock from the magma chamber, held back by more force fields. Then, with a fading him, those force fields shut down.

"Not good," Casteia murmured as the air temperature spiked and tons of molten rock surged into the tunnel.

Drawing deeply on the Force through the meld, Foll Tac spread his hands, and the torrents of magma stopped, roiling and straining against invisible walls. The old Jedi groaned and then closed his withered hands into fists. Shorlee and Casteia watched in awe as the molten rock lost its incandescence, cooling and turning black. The force fields were replaced by massive, solid plugs of hardened volcanic stone. Light seeped from between the Jedi Master's fingers, and he opened his fists, turning to point them at the force field generators trapping them in the corridor. He poured all that heat into the Rakata mechanisms, liquefying them in an instant. The force fields sparked and faded.

When it was done, the Kel Dor sank to his knees, breathing heavily. He gestured to Gree, who guided the old man's arm over his broad shoulder and helped the aged master to his feet. "We should move quickly," Foll Tac informed them wearily. "Those plugs will melt and fail soon."

"Yes, master," Lim'ba replied. The five of them entered the prison, following the Foll Tac's directions. Despite never having been in the prison before, Foll Tac seemed to know where he was going, guiding them through new corridors and intersections without hesitation.

Minutes later, Foll Tab lead them to the last cell at the end of the hallway. "This is the one," the old Jedi breathed reverently. "This is the hope chained in darkness that I have seen." The others peered into the cell dubiously. Backlit by a wall of restrained magma, the prisoner inside was little more than a silhouette at first. When their eyes adjusted they could see a single woman wearing a gray prison jumpsuit. She sat cross-legged on the floor in the center of the cell in a meditative pose with her back to them. Her dark brown hair was long, and fell straight down her back almost to her waist. Separated from the Republic party by the shimmering Rakata force field, she either didn't hear them or chose not to show it, not turning to face them.

The reason for their mission was Master Foll Tac's visions. A longtime member of the Jedi council, Foll Tac's visions had frequently foretold significant events. So when his most recent vision had revealed to him an incarcerated Force user who could change the Empire, the Jedi Council had authorized an elite team to find this person and learn what Foll Tac's vision meant.

Moving to the console, in the wall by the cell, Casteia pulled up the information offered there. "Let's see. She's a human female, with extensive cybernetics. No name or rank… incarcerated by order of Darth Baras under top level security." Gree and Lim'ba exchanged a nervous glance at the name of the infamous Sith who lead the Dark Council and was known as the "Voice of the Emperor".

Casteia kept scrolling through the data. "She's serving a life sentence for... treason against the Empire?" Casteia's furred head shot up in surprise to look at Kel Dor Jedi. "Master Foll Tac, this prisoner is a Sith!" Glancing inside the cell, Casteia's brow furrowed.

Foll Tac appeared unconcerned. "Nonetheless, she is the one I saw in my vision. The threads of destiny swirl around her. Can you open the cell?"

The Selonian shook her head. "Not from here. The security protocols for the cells in this wing are… extreme."

"More lava?" Lim'ba inquired.

Casteia shivered. "Reactor core overload. Whoever this woman is, the people who put her here would rather blow up the whole prison than let her escape."

"Oh."

"Then we find the prison's command center and shut it down from there. We were going to have to find it anyways," Shorlee said. "As long as we're here, there are certainly Republic prisoners we can liberate as well."

Foll Tac nodded. "I will remain here. You four go find the command center."

"Master?" Gree said with concern.

"I must remain. The prison's commander may attempt to purge this cell when our intentions become clear. Now go!"

Reluctantly, the quartet departed. Foll Tac scrutinized its inhabitant. "Who are you, I wonder?" Extending his senses carefully, Foll Tac reached out to the woman in the cell. What he found startled him. He could feel her power, possibly greater than his, but her mind was open, defenseless. He sensed great light within her, but lurking darkness as well. She possessed a calm, serene center that would do any Jedi proud, but old sadness and regret weighed heavily on her. Pain and loss ran so deeply through the woman in the cell that it had become a part of her; internalized, accepted, but still hurting. He could sense nothing of her thoughts other than that she was deep in meditation. Her mind seemed to recognize his presence, but didn't react to it.

Foll Tac was jolted out of his meditation when Gree and Lim'ba returned some time later. "We can open it up. Shorlee's rounding up the Republic prisoners, and Casteia's holding down the fort in the command center." Stepping up to the cell's controls, Lim'ba inserted the prison commander's code key. With a fading hum the force field door disappeared. Inside the cell, the prisoner slowly rose to her feet.

* * *

After Quinn had shot Shen, Baras' men had kept her sedated for the whole trip to Belsavis. She had woken up in her cell in the Hot House, still weak and fatigued from the ravages of childbirth as a cyborg. Her wrists and ankles were adorned with neural disruption shackles and Cyl stood outside the force field, managing to look smug even without a face.

"For years I've thought about killing you, Folcana. It's been all that mattered. I've run a thousand different scenarios through my head, and the hardest part was knowing I could only kill you once. But now I've changed my mind. I don't have to kill you; you've given me a far better way to hurt you." Cyl laughed harshly. "Dear little Zane, the child you wanted so badly you almost killed yourself to bear him."

Cyl leaned close to the force field. "Your son won't have a childhood, Folcana. I'll wait until he's old enough to understand it before I kill his daddy in front of him, and then suffering is all he'll know. I'll mold him into the perfect monster just like you did to me, and then someday when every shred of conscience and humanity is gone from him and he's ready, I'll bring him here. I'll let him know who's responsible for everything he's gone through, and watch your own child kill you." Shen had abandoned dignity, begging Cyl to take revenge on her and leave her child alone, but the alabaster cyborg had just laughed at her and left Shen to her misery.

Incarceration in the Hot House was unpleasant. Like most of the other inmates, Shen was a high value prisoner of special interest to the Dark Council. The Imperial and Sith jailers, eager to curry favor with their superiors, went to great lengths to convey the Empire's displeasure with the inmates. Every so often Shen would be taken from her cell to a claustrophobic questioning room for a perfunctory interrogation followed by a thorough beating, but their best efforts couldn't compare to the agony Shen felt inside every day. The man she gave her heart to had betrayed her, and the child she loved more than anything in the galaxy was at the mercy of her former apprentice.

Being imprisoned in the Hot House gave Shen something she hadn't had since before the accident on Tyrin III: time for reflection. In the long days with nothing to do, Shen found herself considering the past and the choices she had made. Many of the things she'd done and the lives she'd taken had been in service of the Empire, but other things had been unnecessary. She had hurt or killed people who hadn't deserved it for money, or to win influence, or just for her own enjoyment. Looking at her faded reflection in the force field each day, Shen saw the same red-eyed, black-veined monster that Cyl saw, that everyone saw. It was probably what even Quinn saw, he was just an accomplished enough liar to ignore it.

As time passed the regret and pain never left but became a part of her. They were joined by acceptance and new resolve. The Hot House was an inescapable prison, even for a Sith; the Rakata had built it to house their own Force sensitive prisoners. The neural shackles that shocked her unconscious at the first hint of Force use never came off, even when she was allowed to bathe, and the security was incredibly tight.

Understanding that she couldn't escape or change what Cyl would do, Shen decided that all she could do was change herself. If the day came when Cyl brought Zane to kill her, Shen wanted him to see his mother, not a monster ravaged by the dark side. So as months became years, Shen let go of her anger. She spent her days in meditation. The shackles didn't punish opening herself to the Force, only using it.

Finding peace was difficult for Shen, who had only known the Force in anger, in hate. At first her connection to the Force waned, but she persevered, and in time, she felt the light mix with the darkness within her. Shen accepted that the some of the stains on her soul were so deep that nothing would expunge them, but as she put aside her rage, the light accepted her, sins and all, with a grace and beauty that brought her to tears.

More time passed in the volcanic prison, and Shen watched as the angry black veins receded across her face, and then disappeared entirely. Her skin darkened, returning to the rich ebony of her birth. Her red eyes lightened to yellow and then lost their light, darkening back to the deep brown hue she hadn't seen in the mirror in years. The Sith among her jailers taunted her as the "marks of power" faded, believing that she had lost her strength. She did nothing to disabuse them of that notion even as she felt her power grow, the grace of the light and the burden of the dark finding a balance within her.

At the same time, passing her days in communion with the Force, Shen began to sense an ancient, slumbering Force presence somewhere in the Hot House. It whispered at the edges of her consciousness, and invaded her dreams. At first Shen wondered if the Rakata had left something behind somewhere in the eons old prison, but as years passed, she came to understand the true nature of what she was sensing, and welcomed it. The ancient presence was not truly sentient, but clever enough to be lonely. It had been isolated so long that it had come close to forgetting itself. Like Shen, it held both light and darkness, and it was those opposing elements combined in them that allowed their communion.

Then came the day when the Force roiled with new activity. Destruction and death rippled through the Force. Shen felt the prison's Sith guardians die, and souls stained with light move through the Hot House. She was interested to discover that the Force auras of Jedi didn't feel nauseating or unsettling anymore; just different. Assuming that they had raided the prison to free their own, Shen was faintly surprised to sense them coming for her, and even more surprised when her cell's force field was lowered.

Rising to her feet, Shen turned to face the Jedi. A fat human, a skinny blue Twi'lek and an old Kel Dor stood outside the cell. The younger pair eyed her mistrustfully, lightsabers in hand. "Jedi," Shen said, voice cracking from long disuse. "What can I do for you?"

None of them answered right away. The Twi'lek glanced at the disruptor bands around Shen's wrists and ankles, and the chains connecting them. Shen raised one metal-coated eyebrow. "If you're here to kill me it won't be much of a challenge, I'm afraid," she added calmly.

The old Kel Dor looked amused. He raised a hand, and Shen felt the Force move at his command. The locks in the restraints disengaged, and they fell to the floor. "You can fulfill your destiny, if you choose," the Kel Dor answered. "My name is Master Foll Tac."

Rubbing her chafed wrists, Shen stepped out of the cell. "I'm not sure what my name is, now. It's been a while since I needed one. Call me Shen, I suppose," she said to the old Jedi. "Not that I'm ungrateful, but why are you freeing me?"

"The Force showed me someone who could change the Empire," the Kel Dor said. "Is that you?"

Shen shrugged, stretching her muscles now that she was free of the shackles. "I'm going to kill Darth Baras. I imagine that will change the Empire a bit, so yes."

Gree and Lim'ba exchanged a dubious glance. "If you're capable of that, what are you doing here?"

No longer restrained by the neural disruptors, Shen showed them. Opening herself to the Force, she actively drew it in for the first time in years, letting the power not just flow through her but fill her. She was pleasantly surprised to discover that her strength had more than doubled. The light and the dark filled her in a maelstrom of Force power, and the two younger Jedi stepped back, awe and a hint of fear replacing their skepticism. "I was his apprentice once," Shen told them, power and ecstasy coursing through her veins. "He took advantage of a moment of vulnerability to put me here. He won't get another chance like it." As quickly as it had come, Shen let the power drain away.

Before anyone could speak, the prison shook with a deep rumble. A moment passed then it shook more violently, then again. "What did you do?" Lim'ba asked.

Shen shook her head. "That's not me, it's-"

"Turbolaser bombardment!" a new woman's voice called from the Jedi's comlinks. "An Imperial cruiser in orbit just opened fire on the volcano! The shaft has collapsed, and they're firing into the caldera!"

The Jedi paled. "There's another way out," Shen told them. "At least, I think there is. I couldn't confirm it while I was imprisoned." Shen headed for the center of the prison, the Jedi following her.

"Can we trust this Sith?" Lim'ba asked quietly.

"Do you know another exit?" Gree replied calmly.

Shen reached out to the familiar, half-awake presence that had been her closest companion for years. It responded to her, eager and ready, guiding her steps. When she started descending deeper into the prison, the Jedi caught up with her. "Where are we going?" Gree asked. "The control room is above us."

"The room the Imperials filled with holocom receivers and computers hacked into peripheral Rakata systems isn't going to help us," Shen replied, stopping in front of a blank section of wall in a poorly lit, abandoned hallway heavy with dust. "Ah, here we go." Reaching behind the wall with the Force, Shen found the trigger points. Some required dark energy and some required light. Exerting herself along both lines, Shen pushed, and the wall crumbled, revealing an ornate door of shining Rakata metal that slid open. Shen walked inside, feeling the familiar presence envelop her. The circular room was seemingly bare.

"Interesting. What is this place?" Foll Tac inquired.

Shen stepped into the center of the room, kneeling and pressing an open hand to the floor. "The Reclamation Service never understood the true nature of the Hot House. They found a Rakata structure with jail cells buried under a mountain and decided it was just another prison." The floor under Shen began to glow, and then a ring of the floor around her rose up to waist height, shining symbols springing to life along its circumference. Guided by the whispered instruction reverberating through her mind from the ancient Rakata entity, Shen pressed a series of the symbols, and the shuddering of turbolaser strikes faded, replaced by a vibrating hum that slowly rose in intensity and volume. Shen glanced at the startled Jedi. "This isn't a prison, it's a prison ship. The Rakata used it to transport prisoners to Belsavis. They just buried it here when they were done with it."

"Master Foll Tac! The instruments here are going haywire and the Rakata systems aren't responding. The force field output of the prison just tripled, and I think it's starting to move," Shen heard a voice coming from the Jedi's comlinks again.

"Tell your friend to calm down. I've assumed control of the ship. We're going to leave the way it last landed; straight up through the caldera."

When Gree relayed the information to the Selonian in the detention control room, the reply was immediate. "What about my ship!" Casteia yelled.

Shen pulled up an image of the cavern the Imperials used as an entrance. It was starting to crumble as the Rakata vessel came to life. There was a small Corellian freighter parked there. Shen sent a silent question to the presence that had been her companion for years, the Force-imbued Rakata computer that facilitated control of the ship, and it seemed to understand. It showed her new control combinations. Shen rotated the ship, used force field generators to open a path through the magma, and then powered up a tractor beam to draw the smaller ship into an unused docking bay. "Tell your friend her ship is now on board." Shen sent a silent command to the ship's computer: _get us out of here_. The ancient Rakata machine seemed happy to obey. Rumbling as it ascended, the prison ship began climbing out of the magma chamber.

* * *

Admiral Thorzi Teradin sat back at ease in his command chair on the bridge of the Imperial Cruiser _Untamed_, sipping from a cup of caf and watching his ship's heavy turbolasers bombard the surface of the planet below, pounding away at the volcano that housed one of the Empire's most secure prisons. Clouds of dust and debris kicked up by the bombardment were obscuring the area. "Commander, how much longer until this is done?" Teradin asked idly.

The gunnery officer looked up from his work. "The entry shaft collapsed with the first bombardment, Admiral. Based on the geological data we have on the volcano, the caldera should collapse within minutes. The prison will be buried or destroyed soon, sir."

"Admiral, we're getting some strange readings," the sensor officer reported. "It's hard to tell with all of the interference from the dust cloud, but the power levels seem to indicate something large ascending through the atmosphere in the bombardment zone."

"What!" Teradin yelled. "Put it on the main display. Magnify!"

The bridge's large screen changed to display an enhanced view of the planet over the volcano. For a few moments they couldn't see anything but the roiling atmosphere. Then a few moments a golden cube shining with light shot out of the atmosphere, angling away from the bombardment zone.

"What the hell is that?" Teradin demanded.

The sensor officer didn't reply for a moment. "That can't be right…" he muttered. "It's missing a few pieces, but otherwise it matches the sensor profile of the Hot House."

Admiral Teradin felt a chill run through him. If the prison was flight capable, it might have a hyperdrive. "Lay in a pursuit course! All guns target that ship! I want it destroyed now!" The mighty engines of the _Untamed _roared to life as it burned out of orbit, following the flying Rakata cube. Its guns started pounding away at the other ship's force fields. Teradin took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping sweat from his brow. If the inmates of that prison weren't confirmed dead, he knew that Darth Baras would kill him instead.

* * *

The _Hot House_ was rocked by repeated turbolaser strikes. The lights in the bridge dimmed for a moment as the vessel poured more power into the shields and engines. Gree and Lim'ba exchanged a concerned look. Shen, standing in the control ring, spun a few glyphs with her hand, and the walls faded into a display of space outside, alien lettering highlighting the _Untamed_ on their tail, unloading its considerable arsenal in their direction.

"Are we in trouble?" Lim'ba asked Shen.

"Possibly," Shen replied. "The ship's computer is very old, Force-aware and designed for Rakata minds. I've been communing with it for a long time, but something as specific as shield strength and engine output is hard to discern. The ship isn't worried, but I don't know if that's because it's not in danger, or it doesn't understand the threat an Imperial cruiser poses to it."

Foll Tac didn't speak, but Shen felt the old Jedi Master reaching out through the Force, trying to sense the ship. "It won't respond to you, Jedi," she said with a shake of her head. "The Rakata didn't think in terms of light and dark sides of the Force; they used both interchangeably. You've only got half the tools needed to talk to it. Same problem all the Sith who studied this place had. I'm the first Force user since the Rakata died out that the ship's been able to communicate with at all."

Foll Tac looked startled at that admission, peering at Shen intently. "You're not really a Sith anymore, are you?"

A ghost of a smile crossed Shen's lips as she guided the ship behind one of Belsavis' moons, earning a temporary respite from the cruiser's fire. "Oh, I'm still Sith. I've just… expanded my repertoire." The pursuing cruiser matched the maneuver and resumed fire on the prison ship. Shen felt a force field fail, felt prisoners in that section die. Cursing, she rolled the ship to present fresh shields to the cruiser's fire and changed heading.

"Doesn't this thing have weapons?" Lim'ba asked irritably.

Shen's eyes went distant for a moment and then another console rose from the floor near the wall, covered in glowing symbols and a wire frame hologram of surrounding space projected above it. "The ship seems to think that's a weapons system, but I'm not sure what it does. Play around with it and see what you can get it to do. I'm busy with flying. I think I've found the navicomputer but it's complicated, and it doesn't have a 'translate to Basic' function."

As more weapon strikes rocked the Rakata ship and Shen stared into space trying to understand the hyperdrive, Gree and Lim'ba stepped up to the weapons console, trying to make sense of it. It let them drop a targeting reticule over the Imperial cruiser chasing them, and they watched on the diagnostic wireframe as a pair of large openings appeared, one on either side of the _Hot House_, but nothing else happened, and a red aura flashed around their ship's icon. "Maybe it's out of ammunition?" Gree guessed. Lim'ba slammed a fist on the console in frustration.

Casteia, having abandoned the now useless Imperial control center, had joined Foll Tac, Gree and Lim'ba along with Shen in the ship's bridge. Glancing at some of the displays, she noticed little motes of light with strange symbols detaching from the larger icon of the Imperial ship, a dozen of them. "That doesn't look good," the Selonian observed.

"They've launched fighters," Shen confirmed, "and the navicomputer still isn't making any sense." The Rakata ship started shaking as the fighters closed the distance and opened fire.

When the fighters got in close and started swarming all around the prison ship, Gree and Lim'ba saw a change in the weapons console. The flashing red aura around their ship turned green. Puzzled, they watched on the sensors as the paths of the Imperial fighters became erratic and they stopped firing. The Rakata ship hummed at a new frequency, and the lights dimmed slightly.

Before being buried in the volcano, the ship's hold had been emptied of the compliment of two-meter wide metal spheres that constituted its primary armament. The luckless Imperial fighters, however, proved to be acceptable substitutes. The pilots lost control of their craft as the Rakata vessel's magnetic grapples took hold of them. The fighters were accelerated rapidly, spinning around the _Hot House_. The pilots died before they could react as their inertial compensators failed and they were liquefied by the gravitational force. The crews of both ships watched in awe as the captured fighters became blurs of light, accelerating to relativistic speeds as they orbited the Rakata ship. Then the computer took aim and released the fighters, hurling them at the Imperial cruiser at _.3c_. Admiral Teradin and his crew didn't even have time to scream before the dozen projectiles hit the cruiser's bow and vaporized the capital ship in a tremendous explosion.

"That was… interesting," Shen commented as the other occupants of the bridge stared in shock. Then her face brightened. "Oh, here we go! Coordinates locked in." The Rakata ship surged forward, and the stars stretched into the blur of hyperspace. "There we are," she said, addressing the Jedi. "Safe and sound."

"Don't speak too soon, Sith," a harsh new voice came from the bridge entrance. The Jedi and Shen turned to see Shorlee standing in the doorway, her rifle trained on Shen.


	13. Recovery

**Chapter Thirteen: Recovery**

_The Hot House_

Shen glanced over her shoulder at Shorlee. The scarred Miralian stood in the bridge entrance with hate glinting in her eyes and rifle trained on Shen, who took in the tableau before sighing and returning to the hovering ring of controls and her task of making sense of the ship's systems. "Put that away," Shen commented calmly. "You're not going to shoot me."

Gree, Lim'ba, Foll Tac and Casteia glanced back and forth between the pair apprehensively. "Lieutenant, please put away your weapon. This is-" Foll Tac began, stepping forward.

"Two years we were stuck in that hole on Kessel because of you, Shen," Shorlee interrupted. She glared at Shen, and the barrel of her rifle was trained steadily on Shen's back.

"Spice doesn't mine itself, Shorlee," Shen replied with a shrug. The three Jedi and smuggler all looked surprised at their obvious familiarity with each other. "I'm sorry that the POW camp wasn't to your liking. Since you're here, I assume you escaped. How is the bald Cathar?" Shen's danger sense screamed, and she turned with a speed that surprised even the Jedi in the room, extending a hand as a trio of blaster bolts streaked towards her. The shots, capable of tearing through durasteel armor, bounced off of her palm and hit the wall, leaving small scorch marks. Before Shorlee could fire again, Shen's hand closed into a fist, and the barrel of the blaster rifle crumpled in the middle, shooting sparks.

From the corner of her eye Shen saw Casteia draw her blaster, and the younger pair of Jedi had their lightsabers in hand, but she remained focused on Shorlee, who was pulling a vibroblade from her belt. "I should point out that I'm the only person on this ship who knows how to bring it out of hyperspace, much less pilot it to a safe location."

Foll Tac placed himself between Shorlee and Shen. "Calm yourself, Lieutenant," he said firmly to the angry Miralian. "We are not here to fight this woman. "

"Maybe you're not, but I am," Shorlee shot back. "Two members of Havoc Squad are dead because of her."

Foll Tac faltered at that, while Shen only raised a metallic eyebrow. "I executed that deserter you were captured with in accordance with Imperial law. I wasn't aware I was responsible for any other deaths in your unit."

Shorlee called Shen something unpleasant in Huttese. "Aric Jorgan was killed during our… departure from Kessel," Casteia stated, her voice now cold and hostile.

Shen nodded in comprehension. "I see." Crossing her arms, she looked back at Shorlee. "I'm sorry for your loss, but as long as we're re-hashing old grievances, I'll point out that you got better than you deserved after what you did to Vette. My actions were in accordance with Imperial law, but I doubt beating a prisoner bloody, choking her half to death with that garrote in your gauntlet and cutting off the tip of her lekku with a vibroblade are covered by the Republic's conventions on treatment and questioning of captured enemy combatants." Shen could sense the surprise coming from the Jedi, and she saw Lim'ba's lekku twitch for a moment before she got them under control.

Foll Tac looked slightly disappointed as he saw the truth of Shen's words in Shorlee's expression. "Lieutenant, Casteia, why don't you two excuse us for a moment?"

Scowling, Shorlee nodded reluctantly and departed with the black-furred Selonian.

The bridge was silent for a few long moments. "What happens now?" Gree finally asked, breaking the silence.

"We'll be in hyperspace for another eighteen hours," Shen replied. "When we return to real space, you'll take the Republic prisoners, get on your ship and go on your way."

"That's it?" Lim'ba asked in surprise.

"Well I'm not giving you this ship. I need it," Shen replied lightly. "The _Hot House_ is going to become Darth Baras' worst nightmare," she continued seriously. "I'm not the only one he sent here to rot, and I'm going to turn them all against him. He'll get what's coming to him, and then we can find a way to end this war."

Gree and Lim'ba looked surprised to hear that from a Sith, but Foll Tac nodded thoughtfully. "All right." A lifetime of wariness of Sith warred with the certainty of his vision and a growing sense that this woman was the key to ending the war with the Empire peacefully. Deciding to trust in the Force, Fill Tac glanced at his apprentices. "Why don't you two go help out with the evacuation? Make sure we have all of the Republic personnel on the _Red Claw_."

"Yes, master," the pair replied.

* * *

_Unknown Regions, Fullerbright System_

By the time the _Hot House_ dropped out of hyperspace near the second planet of the Fullerbright system, everyone's affairs were in order. The Republic team had located and freed all prisoners from the Republic or who wanted asylum in the Republic, and loaded them on board the _Red Claw_. Shen had worried at first how to handle the remaining eighty or so prisoners she was keeping with the jailers all dead or prisoners themselves. But the ship's computer had solved the problem for her, activating a number of venerable Rakata droids to tend to the inmates until she could talk to them personally. Shen recovered her armor and lightsaber from the prison's armory, but left the helmet behind. She didn't need to hide her face anymore.

Shen was back in the bridge, captain and crew of one when the _Red Claw_ flew out of the _Hot House's_ docking bay. She only had to wait a few moments before Casteia's voice came over the comm system. "Where is this? It doesn't look like the Corellian system."

"Hold on for a moment; maybe I misunderstood this Rakata computer's coordinates." Hours earlier Shen had had a few nervous moments after telling the three Jedi that she was dropping them off on the outskirts of the Corellian system, but none of them, not even venerable Foll Tac, had sensed her deception. Feeling a bit guilty for what she had to do, Shen sent the silent command to the Rakata ship's computer: _fire._

During the hyperspace jump, the ship's systems had fabricated a handful of smaller metal spheres from scrap at Shen's command and loaded them in the _Hot House's_ ammo bay. In response to her mental order, the internal magnetic accelerators took hold of two of the skull-sized spheres and fired them at a third of the speed of light. The _Red Claw_, less than a kilometer to port and not maneuvering, had no warning or chance to evade as the two projectiles ripped clean through the freighter's hull.

"What are you doing?" Casteia yelled as she threw her wounded ship into an evasive roll and returned laser and missile fire that the _Hot House's _shields easily absorbed. Shen didn't answer; the _Hot House_ transmitted a data packet to the _Red Claw_ and then accelerated and vanished into hyperspace.

Sapphire eyes flickering over the freighter's controls, Casteia hissed in dismay. The twin strikes had torn clean through the hyperdrive and hypercomm, shattering them and removing the _Red Claw_'s ability to travel or communicate faster-then-light. The hits had also compromised the integrity of the hull, and alarms warned her that the freighter was rapidly venting atmosphere to space. Sensors picked up breathable atmosphere on the planet below, so Casteia brought the engines to life gently, wincing at the ominous rattling they produced, and descended toward the planet. She could hear panicked shouts from the passenger compartment behind them.

Shorlee barreled into the cockpit with Gree and Lim'ba close behind. "What was that?" the Miralian demanded.

"That piece of Sith poodoo opened fire on us and jumped out of the system. Also, this doesn't look like Corellia," Casteia informed them as she struggled to keep the ship on course, trying to enter the atmosphere of the vibrantly blue and green but obviously undeveloped planet without overwhelming the compromised heat shielding.

Muttering "I-told-you-sos" under her breath, Shorlee dropped into the copilot's seat and started managing the growing fluctuations in the power core. "Hull integrity and power core shielding are failing," the Miralian said grimly. "Set this thing down soon or we're going to crater."

"Tell me something I don't know," Casteia shot back. When the heat of atmospheric entry faded, they were flying over an inland sea that quickly gave way to rolling forests and fields. Decelerating as fast as the hull would permit, Casteia aimed for a large, flat grassy area Gree marked out for her after scanning the sensor data.

They managed to land in one piece, but the sea of red indicators on the cockpit consoles made clear that absent serious repairs in a dry dock that this planet probably didn't possess, the _Red Claw_ would not be taking off again or calling for help. Shorlee started shutting down the reactor before it exploded as the hull ticked and sighed, cooling rapidly.

Lim'ba, who had been looking over the data packet transmitted by the _Hot House_ before its departure, paled slightly. "This is survey data for this planet," she said, drawing the attention of the others. "Lots of life and fresh water, edible flora and fauna, temperate climate… no native sentient species… and there's a holorecording in with it."

Casteia found the recording Lim'ba was talking about and brought it up on the main holodisplay as Foll Tac paused in the hallway just outside the cockpit.

"I'm sorry," a hologram of Shen said with sadness on her miniaturized features, "stranding you on a deserted planet is poor repayment for your aid, but taking down Darth Baras only works if no one knows how I escaped. If it gets out that Jedi rescued me, it won't matter what I do; I'll never have the legitimacy to topple Baras. I've sent you the findings of the Imperial survey team that discovered this system to aid you in making a life here. The planet is ideal for humanoid habitation; it would be colonized already if it weren't so remote; unfortunately, as it stands it will in all likelihood be centuries before anyone returns here." Shen paused, as though gathering her thoughts. "I know this is cold comfort, but your actions will make a difference. The war has to stop; it's hurting the Empire as much as the Republic, and Darth Baras is driving it. I will destroy him and create a peace, but for that to happen, all of you have to disappear. Again, I'm sorry." Shen looked like she was about to say more but then shook her head. The recording ended.

The five of them just stared at the holopad for a long moment. Then Casteia sighed, got up, and brushed past Foll Tac, who stood numb with shock, wondering if this was truly the will of the Force. Casteia headed down the hall to the boarding ramp of her ruined ship. The Selonian ran her hand along the bulkhead, a low, sad noise emanating from her throat. The _Red Claw_ had been her companion for decades; now it was a wreck. Lowering the boarding ramp, Casteia stepped outside. The air was pleasantly warm, and a light breeze bent the long stalks of grass around them. Casteia heard the others descending the ramp, along with some of the passengers. Quiet conversations turned loud as the two dozen or so recently rescued prisoners were informed by the Jedi that they were trapped again, albeit this time on an entire habitable world.

Shorlee stepped up beside Casteia, looking out over the vista. "It's a pretty world," she observed. Casteia nodded. "At least it's nicer than the last planet that Sith bitch stranded me on," the Miralian offered with a trace of humor.

Casteia surprised both of them by laughing, remembering the nightmarish prison on Kessel where they had met years earlier. "That it is."

* * *

_The Hot House_

Shen stood at the head of a conference table in the large room that the prison's administrators had used for meetings, looking out at the assembled individuals seated around the table. The population of the Hot House had declined further in the days after she dropped off her Republic rescuers at their new home. She had vented the cell holding the surviving prison guards and officers into space without regret. Their brutal treatment of the prisoners in their care over the years had earned them their fate, and with their deaths, no one remained who knew the truth of the _Hot House's_ departure from Belsavis. Once that was done, Shen started taking stock of the remaining prisoners. In one category were the "psychos", a collection of mad Sith, soldiers, pirates and hired guns so unstable and vile that Shen was mystified as to why Baras had kept them alive. Shen was tempted to space that contingent as well, but settled for simply keeping them incarcerated.

That left about fifty prisoners who were beings like her that had stood between Baras and some bit of power: Sith Lords, Imperial officers, intelligence agents, a few bounty hunters and mercenaries, even a Hutt. After interviewing them all, she had dropped off most of the neutrals including the Hutt on Nar Shaddaa. They would cause trouble for Baras all on their own. A few of the ex-Imperials disembarked there as well. What Shen was left with was a potent and potentially influential group who were willing to follow her if it meant a shot at Darth Baras.

Shen had chosen as her second in command another familiar face from the same time in her life as Shorlee; Lord Cineratus. The gray-haired assassin had surprised her with his presence in the _Hot House_ and the reason for his incarceration. "Baras tried to hire me to kill you," he had said simply. "When I refused, he trumped up treason charges and sent me here to silence me."

"I'm flattered that you would turn him down," Shen had responded.

"Don't be," he had shot back with a grin. "His offer for your head was considerable. I would have taken the job if I had thought I could defeat you; I followed your exploits after our first meeting, and I was reasonably sure I'd lose to a swordswoman good enough to take down Darth Vengean."

The meeting Shen now presided over had begun violently. In addition to the prisoners who had been willing to follow her lead where a handful that she could sense had designs of their own. Shen had freed them anyways and allowed them to re-arm themselves. Sure enough, they had challenged her for leadership as soon as the meeting started. The Rakata droids had hauled away the smoking pieces of their bodies when Shen was done with them, but the scent of scorched flesh hung in the air, and did a marvelous job of focusing the attention of those who remained.

Cineratus and the rest of the twenty or so other Sith among the former inmates were content to follow Shen's lead. They were united by a desire to have revenge on Baras and convinced Shen was their best chance of seeing him brought down.

By the time Shen called the meeting, the dozen or so intelligence agents had already selected a dour looking Chiss male of middling years named Cipher Fourteen as their leader. He'd already provided Shen with some interesting information, including the dislike that Keeper, the head of Imperial Intelligence felt towards Darth Baras. It was good to know.

The remaining prisoners were a mix of Imperial officers, moffs and mercenaries who had fallen into Baras' category of "too dangerous to leave free and too useful to kill". They all possessed connections and knowledge that Shen knew would prove useful, and like everyone else in the room, a desire to see Baras pay.

After sharing their collective knowledge and using the ship's Holonet connection to catch up on news, Shen and her allies had a plan. They renamed the Rakata ship _Pride's Fall,_ in honor of their pact to destroy Darth Baras. They made its first stop a deserted asteroid belt, where the Rakata systems fabricated new ammunition for the magnetic launchers and repaired the damage from the fight with the Imperial cruiser over Belsavis. Their next stop was a remote and poorly defended Imperial space station on the borders of Imperial space that served as a hub for arriving and departing scouting ships. The _Pride's Fall_ made quick work of the station's defenses, and a handful of Sith lead by Lord Cineratus easily boarded and took control of the station, yielding them a trove of classified data on disposition of Imperial Forces and a number of small, fast ships. Members of the crew with connections and allies that would prove useful in the coming fight commandeered a few of those ships, to rally Baras' enemies and seek out more information. After taking everything they needed, they filled the _Pride's Fall's _cells with survivors of the attack and added a few who were willing to join them to the crew, then destroyed the station before setting out for Shen's next goal.

While in hyperspace, Shen was approached provately by an enigmatic pair of Sith Purebloods who were among the prison's newest inmates, having arrived just weeks before Shen's escape. They spoke strangely and called themselves Servant One and Servant Two. Shen was inclined to write them off as slightly addled when they claimed to be representatives of the Sith Emperor, but as they told her more about Baras' betrayal of the Emperor and his declaration of himself as a false Voice, Shen listened. The pair had access to information that Shen had a hard time believing could come from anyone outside the Emperor's inner circle, and they provided Shen with intel on Baras' weaknesses that she never would have guessed. After dismissing them, Shen sat in her quarters for a long time, watching the mottled blur of hyperspace fly by, contemplating the possibilities now in front of her.

* * *

_Purgatory System_

When the _Pride's Fall_ arrived in the Purgatory System, it faced a tougher fight. Home to one of the sector's largest prisons in the system's asteroid belt as well as an inhabited world, the system's defenses consisted of a cruiser and a pair of frigates that launched fighters as soon as Shen's forces dropped out of hyperspace. Fortunately, by the time they arrived the _Pride's Fall_ wasn't alone anymore. One of the incarcerated mercenary captains, a scarred, purple-skinned Rodian matriarch named Rinesza, had made contact with her clan, which had sworn a blood feud against Darth Baras and sent a frigate of their own as well as a fighter-carrier that held two squadrons of lozenge-shaped Rodian fighter-bombers.

The Battle of Purgatory was short and fierce, but in the end Shen's forces prevailed. They had the advantage of surprise, as well as the exotic weapons and unusually strong shields of the Rakata cruiser. After the Imperial cruiser and one of the frigates were destroyed, the other frigate's captain surrendered and pulled back the surviving Imperial fighters. While the Rodians set off gleefully to neutralize the Imperial garrison on Purgatory IV, Shen took the _Pride's Fall_ to the prison complex, an asteroid mine hollowed out of the largest rock in the belt, a demi-planet designated 67-A.

Once the _Pride's Fall_ had destroyed the prison's defenses it surrendered, and Shen took a shuttle to the asteroid with a boarding team. Her people took control and started evaluating the prisoners for recruitment or release. Shen, meanwhile, was focused on a familiar Force presence, one that had drawn her to the Purgatory system in the first place. She followed it through the prison's administration section, where she could sense her quarry on the other side of a sealed door. The prison officer who met her in the landing bay, Lieutenant Hayes, identified it as the warden's quarters. Shen was about to carve her way in with her lightsaber when her danger sense warned her of potentially deadly countermeasures embedded in the door. Instead she ordered the warden brought before her, fuming at the delay.

Warden Harloc, when he was dragged before her, turned out to be an obese, sweating human male in a gray uniform stretched over his bulk with skin as dark as Shen's and a shaved head. Nervousness and uncertainty oozed off of the man as Ytac, a male Pureblood assassin who had been among those freed from the _Hot House_ prodded him along. "My Lord, may I enquire as to the reason for this attack? We are loyal servants of the Empire, and-"

"Open this," Shen instructed Harloc, pointing to the sealed door to his quarters.

"These are my quarters, my Lord. There is nothing of importance here," Harloc protested, fear pouring off of him.

"Except the women he takes from the prison population for his personal amusement," Lieutenant Hayes commented. She could sense the soldier's disgust with the warden. Harloc glared at Hayes, who ignored his former supervisor's disdain.

Shen felt her anger surge. She ignited her lightsaber, the tip hovering centimeters from Harloc's throat. "Open the door or we find out how many pieces of your bloated hide I can cut off before you die," Shen threatened.

Staring death in the face, Harloc whimpered and nodded. Shen backed off enough to let him open the door and then dragged Harloc behind her by the simple expedient of a Force grip on his neck, following the sense of that familiar presence through the sumptuously decorated foyer and hallway deeper into the apartment. Ytac and Hayes exchanged a glance, shrugged, and followed them.

A final door hissed open before Shen, and she stepped into a large, lavishly decorated bedroom that would do a moff proud. Shen barely saw the large bed and exquisite furnishings though, her eyes drawn to the room's other occupants as her anger swelled. Shoving Harloc into Ytac's grasp, she growled, "Keep an eye on him," then entered the room and closed the door behind her. Lounging on a pile of pillows in a corner of the room were two women dressed in scandalously sheer lingerie woven from Alderaanian moon silk that left nothing to the imagination. The shackles around each of their left ankles connected to the wall were the first hint that they weren't there willingly, and as Shen got closer, she could tell from their glazed eyes and muddied Force presences that they were heavily drugged.

The first of the women, the one Shen knelt beside and drew into her arms carefully, was Vette. Her red skin and tattoos were unmistakable, though her face and body had matured in the years since Shen had last seen her. Vette still wore the collar with Shen's mark, as no one in the prison would have been able to remove it.

When Vette's glazed eyes saw Shen's face she started crying. "The hallucinations are the worst part," she mumbled. "Please, no more," the Twi'lek woman said in a voice so sad and broken that it tore at Shen's heart. Pressing her hand to Vette's forehead, Shen pushed the Force into her, using her newfound light-given abilities to purge the cocktail of narcotics from Vette's blood. Gradually, her eyes became more focused and alert.

Different emotions flickered across Vette's face once the drugs were purged from her body. "You look older. The hallucinations never looked older. Is that really you, Shen?"

Shen hugged Vette. "It really is me, Vette. I'm so sorry for this, but it's over now." Drawing back, she popped Vette's shackle open with a gesture. Sitting up, Vette glanced at the other woman, a Miralian woman with long, wavy black hair that fell almost to her waist and a lithe figure. Her face was marked with a spiraling pattern of small black triangles, and vividly colored purple eyes looked back at the pair in a drugged stupor. "Can you help Linse as well?" Vette pleaded. Nodding, Shen repeated the cleansing technique on the Miralian and opened her shackles. When Linse came to her senses, she started conversing rapidly with Vette in Huttese, tears coming to her eyes. The Twi'lek and Miralian embraced, both crying, and Shen looked away, trying not to imagine what they must have endured.

The door hissed open, and Shen rose to check. It was Hayes, carrying some of the gray prison jumpsuits. He handed them to Shen, anger at the warden clear on his face when he glimpsed the pair of prisoners, and then retreated as Shen helped them get dressed.

When they exited the bedroom, Vette and Linse saw Harloc, and hate poured off of both women in waves. The warden regarded his former playthings with undisguised terror. Looking at Shen desperately, he pleaded, "I know things! I have valuable information that will aid you! You need me!"

Shen answered by slugging Harloc in the gut with the full strength of her prosthetic arm. The fat man's eyes bulged, and he fell to the ground. Shen calmly drew a pair of vibroblades from the tops of her boots and handed them hilt first to Vette and Linse. "I'm going to go find Pierce. Take your time," she advised the pair, then gestured to Ytac and Hayes to follow. As they exited the warden's quarters and the door hissed shut, Harloc started screaming.

"You, stay here and bring them to me when they're done," Shen instructed Ytac, who nodded with a grin. "You, come with me," she said to Lieutenant Hayes who nodded, his face pale as he glanced at the door to the warden's quarters, then followed her.

"I need to find a prisoner named Pierce. Human male, red hair, former Imperial lieutenant."

Hayes nodded. "I know him. When he found out Warden Harloc had taken that poor Twi'lek woman for his… amusement, Pierce went ballistic. He put three men in the infirmary before we subdued him."

Shen felt a chill run through her. Eyes narrowed, she shoved Hayes against the wall. "Where is he?"

Hayes blinked. "You're the one. You're the Sith Lord he worked for. He talked about you, but he thought you were probably dead." Seeing the anger in Shen's eyes, he hastily added, "Pierce is alive, don't worry." When Shen let go of him, he elaborated. "Most of the guards here are military men, like me. We don't like the warden, but he is…" Hayes glanced over his shoulder and winced. "Err… he was appointed by the Sith, so no one could touch him until you arrived. The warden ordered Pierce executed, but it didn't sit right with me, so some of the other guards helped me smuggle him out to one of the satellite mines. Conditions are a bit rough, but the warden never toured them. Pierce has been on 84-Y for the last few years. I'll send a shuttle to go retrieve him if you like, my Lord."

Shen nodded. "Do it, and thank you for helping him."

They reached the prison's command center, and Lieutenant Hayes broke off briefly to send the order to retrieve Pierce. "Where do we stand?" Shen asked Cineratus, who was poring over prisoner records.

"There are some more useful recruits for the cause in the high security wing. It's too soon to determine what do with the rest," the gray haired assassin answered.

"Pierce is on his way here, My Lord," Hayes informed Shen, returning to her side.

"Good," Shen answered, then a thought struck her, and she turned to the Imperial lieutenant, really looking at him for the first time. Hayes had the pale skin of a veteran spacer, his green eyes sharp and his blond hair cut regulation short. There was a bit of gray creeping into his temples and his face had a few lines, but he was solidly built. "Hayes, you command the guards, correct?" He nodded. "What percentage of your prisoner population do you feel shouldn't be here?"

Hayes looked thoughtful, stepping over to the main display. "Block A is Republic POWs. Blocks C and D are the hard cases. Murderers, rapists, traitors, deserters and the like," he narrated as he pulled up prisoner lists on the display. "Block B is the minimum security wing. They have the smallest population but generally the best ore output and the fewest disciplinary incidents; they're a mix of political prisoners and minor offenders – smugglers and the like – who managed to piss someone off. Block E and the satellite mines, which your companion already mentioned, are the high security sections. They're a mix of lower-ranking Sith, bounty hunters, inmates with military training like Pierce. Individuals there could go either way. Some I'd have no problem seeing released; others should die on this rock, if my Lord will pardon my boldness."

"All right," Shen accepted the assessment with a nod. "Lord Cineratus, approach and recruit anyone in Block E that you feel can be useful, and take the Lieutenant's council on who to invite. Offer Block B a choice of release or joining us and having a chance to get back at the people who put them here; they'll serve our purpose either way."

"And the others?" Cineratus inquired.

"Leave them," Shen decided. "They'll still be Baras' problem when he reclaims the system." She glanced at Hayes. "You and your men should probably come with us. I don't have the resources to hold this system, and the next force loyal to Darth Baras that comes through here will probably kill you all for 'failing' to stop me, as though that was feasible."

Hayes stiffened. "My Lord… I cannot ask my men to betray the Empire."

Shen saw Cineratus reach for his lightsaber, and gave him a minute shake of the head. "I'm not asking you to betray the Empire, Lieutenant. I'm asking you to help save it. The war with the Republic is going to destroy the Empire if it continues; we've already taken more territory than we can hold. We should be seeking a truce with the Republic and consolidating the systems under our control, but Darth Baras and the rest of the Dark Council have continued to use the war as a political tool to gain advantage on Dromund Kaas without considering the needs of the Empire as a whole. I'm going to kill Baras, bring the Council to heel if necessary, and preserve the Empire's strength. That's what I'm working towards."

Cineratus, who knew Shen's goals, smiled slightly, while Hayes looked shaken. "I see. In that case, we will join you." He paused. "My Lord, a number of my men have families who might be targeted for reprisals."

"Are they on Purgatory IV?" Shen asked. When Hayes nodded, she turned to Cineratus. "Send one of your men with Hayes here to take a shuttle, go find Rinesza's Rodians and tell them to extract the families of Hayes' men before they leave the planet. I want us out of this system as quickly as feasible. We can't be here when the sector fleet arrives."

"Yes, my Lord," Cineratus replied, signaling to a whip-thin Rattataki sorcerer to accompany Hayes.

Shen turned to the door as Vette and Linse entered with Ytac trailing behind them. Shen could sense how fragile Vette's mind was, cracks running through her psyche, and knew that a single blow could break her. But there was a cold kernel of satisfaction in her now, a piece of the old Vette, and Shen suspected it had to do with the few spatters of blood on her jumpsuit. She had expected more, but then, Vette was very precise in her blade work.

"It's done?" Shen inquired.

The Twi'lek and Miralian exchanged a glance. "He's dead," Linse volunteered quietly, returning Shen's vibroblade to her.

"Very, very dead," Vette confirmed with satisfaction, handing back her knife as well.

"Good work, and welcome back. I've missed you, Vette," Shen added quietly.

"Where's Pierce?" Vette asked.

"Right here," a deep voice from the entrance responded. Vette turned with an excited cry to see Pierce standing there. His prison uniform was somewhat ragged, and his hair was longer and going a bit gray at the temples, but the same fire burned in his eyes. Vette jumped into his arms, and they embraced tightly, exchanging quiet words before turning to face Shen.

"I owe both of you an apology and more" Shen admitted. "I failed you, and you paid a terrible price for it. Words can't express my debt to you."

Vette shook her head silently, "You came for us. That's what matters."

"Quinn betrayed us, betrayed you. That's not anyone's fault but his," Pierce growled.

Shen shivered a bit, remembering. For the sake of her own sanity, she had walled off her conflicted feelings for her husband years ago. Being with Vette and Pierce sent cracks shooting through that wall, but Shen couldn't afford to dwell on it now.

"What's the situation?" Vette asked, and Shen smiled at her, grateful for the change of subject.

"Walk with me," Shen said, then lead Pierce, Vette and Linse down to the docking bay, where they boarded her private shuttle to return to the _Pride's Fall_. Sensing a private conversation coming, Linse whispered something to Vette in Huttese and then joined the pilot in the cockpit. "I spent the last six years in the prison where the Empire sends Force users to rot," Shen told Pierce and Vette. "Recently I was able to escape and take the place over. I've picked up a lot of allies and a ship you have to see to believe. I'm going to get my son back, and then I'm going to kill Cyl and Baras." Shen didn't mention Quinn, because she wasn't sure if she'd kiss him, tear his heart out or both if she ever saw him again. Glancing at Vette and Pierce sitting side by side, Shen paused. "But none of that has to involve you two. You've both done and suffered more than enough for my sake. I can give you your own ship and enough credits to start a new life far from the Empire." Shen didn't want to lose them so soon after finding them again, but she had no right to ask them to stay.

Pierce and Vette exchanged a glance and then shook their heads. "No, we're staying with you, Shen," Vette said firmly. "We have the same scores to settle that you do, and I'll be damned if I'm going to leave you alone to do it." Pierce nodded in agreement.

Shen had to blink to fight back tears. Glancing at Vette's collar, Shen shook her head. She had no place to consider Vette a slave anymore. Stepping up to Vette, she put her hands on the collar and concentrated. "I wasn't lying when I told you all those years ago that this wasn't designed to come off, but I've learned a lot since then." Under the pressure of Shen's will, the fused internal workings of the collar came apart at a molecular level and it opened, falling into Shen's hands before she let it fall to the floor with a "clank".

Vette blinked, her hand moving to her throat, touching skin that was slightly paler than the rest of her, having been covered for more than a decade. "Thank you," the Twi'lek said simply.

"Thank you," Shen replied, embracing both of them. "I don't deserve friends like you, but I'm glad to have you."

"What's the next step?" Pierce asked as Shen sat down.

"We're going to make Baras' life miserable. We've already set a few things in motion, and I've gotten some intelligence that will really hurt him if it pans out. If you two are going to stay with me, I do have a special job for you."

"What is it?" Vette asked.

"Take the ship I already promised you, and locate my son. Find Zane," Shen told them. "He might be with Quinn, or Cyl might have taken him by now. I don't know. If Cyl does have him get me a location; I'll have to deal with it."

"If Quinn has him?" Pierce asked.

Shen pressed her eyes shut. "Do whatever you have to. Kill him if he tries to stop you," she said, her heart aching as she spoke." I want my son back." She sighed raggedly. "Every fiber of me wants to find Zane myself, but if I don't lead this merry band of revolutionaries against Baras they will fail and there won't be a safe place in the galaxy for us or Zane."

"We understand, Shen. We'll find him," Vette assured her. Then she glanced at the cockpit. "What about Linse?"

Shen considered it. "I don't want her going with you. I believe you trust her, but until I can trust her I don't want her involved in the search for Zane. She'll stay on the _Pride's Fall_ as my guest, or if she wants to leave she's welcome to."

Vette nodded, looking troubled but unwilling to argue the point with Shen; she doubted she'd feel any differently if it was her child and a stranger Shen knew. "Please be gentle with her, then," Vette asked. "Linse has been through hell, and she was a civilian. She never had the training I did. Being in that place was really hard on her."

Shen nodded. "I understand. I won't assign her a marauder as a roommate."

Vette looked startled and then laughed when she realized Shen was joking. The trio passed the rest of the flight back to the _Pride's Fall_ in idle conversation, catching up after years apart.


	14. The Wages of War

**Chapter Fourteen: The Wages of War**

* * *

_Kaas City – The Dark Citadel_

As the turbolift carried Darth Cyl towards the peak of the tower where Darth Baras made his lair she could feel his rage swirling through the Force like a storm looming over the city. Her master's Force presence was always a sea of dark emotions, but what she was feeling now and the haste with which she had been summoned made clear that whatever was going on, it couldn't be good news.

Cyl studied her reflection in the mirrored turbolift wall. The last several years had changed her quite a bit. For one, she was now the right hand of Darth Baras, Voice of the Emperor and undisputed regent of the Empire. The Dark Council was still a force to be reckoned with to be sure, but none of them had the power to challenge Cyl's master.

Cyl's appearance, in contrast to her station, had remained much the same, her face a featureless alabaster mask, her body sheathed in pale plasteel under flowing white robes. Shortly after seeing her former master brought low, she had been tempted to alter the hated faceless mask that Folcana had given her, but upon reflection, she decided to remain as she was. The constant reminder of the price she had paid for being weak was a wellspring of hate that nourished her black soul and made her powerful. Cyl's mastery of the dark side had grown greatly since defeating her old master. She was stronger now than Folcana had been, but whereas Folcana's strength had been a threat to Baras, Cyl's was not. They both knew that Cyl could rise no higher than the station she had. While her previous life was not widely known, the members of the Dark Council were aware that Cyl was a fallen Jedi, and no one who was not born Sith could be trusted to join the Council.

When the turbolift came to a stop Cyl stepped out of the turbolift, followed by her twin handmaidens. While Cyl's figure was pale and bright, her attendants were dressed in long, black robes from head to toe with long sleeves that hid their arms and deep hoods that obscured their features. Like all of Cyl's attendants the two who obediently trailed her were young, pale-skinned, slender women. Each had a collapsed force pike hidden beneath her robes, ready to be drawn at a moment's notice. Their hoods all but hid the unusual modification to their appearance; their heads were hairless, and both were grafted with cyborg headbands that wrapped completely around the head from halfway down the forehead to just above the tip of the nose, covering the middle third of their faces.

Like Cyl, their sight and hearing were replaced by artificial senses, though the implants in the headbands were not as sensitive as Cyl's. Their headbands were of the BioTech series and interfaced directly with their brains via nanowires threaded through their skulls, hooking their cybernetic senses into their brains and allowing them to access and interface with computer systems.

Unlike Cyl, the headbands were not a replacement for damaged body parts. Like each of the twenty women Cyl had initially selected as her handmaidens three years prior, they had possessed perfect eyesight and hearing before going under the knife of Cyl's surgeons. All of the handmaidens had been daughters of nobility in House Organa on Alderaan, taken captive in a series of raids Cyl had conducted on her former home world. It was the fault of their own house of course, rising up against the planet's rightful rulers, House Thul, just years after Folcana had secured the planet for the Empire. Cyl had taken delight in returning to her home world, slaughtering the troops of her former employers, and capturing a number of the arrogant, spoiled socialites and heiresses who had spit on Cyl and ordered her around in her previous life as the humble servant girl Jaesa Wilsaam.

Three years later, twelve handmaidens were left. Eight had died in the intervening period; a few had died defending Cyl or had not attained the necessary prowess with their weapons and had fallen at their mistress' hand. Others had suffered mental breakdowns as a result of their implants and training, and had to be put down. The survivors were hard, efficient and loyal as trained neks, ready to kill or die at Cyl's command. Through her control over their cyborg headbands Cyl could inflict agonizing pain on them with a thought, or simply turn off their vision and hearing. All of them had broken long ago and been molded into the obedient weapons of their mistress.

Reaching Baras' chambers, Cyl sent a signal to the handmaidens through her own cybernetics and they took up positions near the door and his guards without hesitation. While Cyl despised the women she had turned into her servants, they were her tools now, and she wasn't about to risk Baras killing one of them in a fit of anger. That pleasure was Cyl's alone. Baras' personal guards stepped aside, and the door hissed open, admitting Cyl.

The smoking corpse of one of Darth Baras' servants slumped against a wall told Cyl that her instincts had been spot on, and she had to sidestep a moment after entering the room to avoid a Force-hurled desk chair that hit the wall behind her and broke apart. In the time since becoming Baras' apprentice Cyl had seen him slip into rage many times, and recently it was getting worse as no one remained to rein him in. Usually she just avoided him until his moods passed, but he had summoned her, so the news had to be bad _and_ something he expected her to rectify.

Force energy swirled visibly around Baras as he stood quaking with rage. When he saw Cyl, the portly man extended a finger in accusation. "This is a disaster and it's all your fault!" before Cyl could reply he gestured to a datapad on his massive desk and hurled it at Cyl with the Force.

Slowing it with her own power, she plucked it out of the air, skimming the first report quickly. "The Rodians attacked the Purgatory system? The Rodians haven't attacked anyone in centuries. There are easier places to take slaves than an Imperial prison."

"Keep going," Baras growled.

When Cyl saw that the next report was from Imperial Intelligence on Belsavis, a hard knot formed in her stomach. Other than losing the planet entirely, there was only one thing on the Rakata prison world that could upset her master this much. When she was done reading, Cyl sighed. "Well poodoo."

"That's putting it mildly. You convinced me not to kill Folcana. Well now she's not only freed herself but a hundred or so of the Empire's worst enemies. The Hutts are furious. That clan head of theirs they thought was dead turned up on Nar Shaddaa a few weeks ago, along with a few smuggler chiefs whose networks have rapidly returned to being an immense thorn in our sides," Baras raised a clenched fist. "Folcana is already making war against us, apprentice. Outposts are going dark. Some ships have already joined her, and when she took off with the Hot House she also managed to recruit the most dangerous renegade Sith in the galaxy. This is a serious problem, Cyl, and I won't even bring up your failure with Quinn. You created this mess, so now you're going to go solve it. Deal with this before the Council finds out who's behind these disturbances. I don't want to see you again until you're presenting Folcana's head to me. Fail and no one will ever see you again." The ultimatum – and the threat – was clear.

"As you will, my Master," Cyl replied simply before departing, mind already racing with plans for how to salvage this situation before it ended her career. _Baras was right,_ Cyl admitted to herself. _I should have killed Folcana when I had her at my mercy._

* * *

_Kaas City – Undercity Slums_

Wrapped in a light gray hooded cloak, Vette made her way through the narrow and mostly deserted alleyways of Kaas City's lowest levels, near the bedrock. Under the hood she wore a holomasker that changed her skin tint to yellow and hid her distinctive Sith tattoos. She had seen wanted posters going up for herself and Pierce in the days since arriving on Dromund Kaas, and the sums being offered would be flattering if they didn't ensure that every bounty hunter on the planet would be looking for them.

Vette kept her hands close to her blasters as she made her way to the location Pierce had transmitted to her in an encrypted comm message. Bounty hunters and muggers weren't the only hazards down this low; feral animals prowled the streets at this depth, with teeth and claws strong enough to chip permacrete.

Turning a corner, Vette wrinkled her nose in disgust. Mounds of rotting organic garbage were piled high against the alley's walls. Shaking her head in resignation, she started threading her way through the debris, avoiding touching anything with natural grace. She was navigating a section so congested that she had to edge through sideways on a curving path that made it impossible to see more than a few meters in either direction when hands shot out of the mound of refuse behind her, one covering her mouth and the other pinning her against a broad chest as she was yanked backwards and off her feet.

Vette's eyes widened as she was pulled back through the holoshroud that had been mimicking the trash pile and into a dark entryway. A heavy durasteel door slid shut over the opening, plunging the passage into darkness. Vette's blaster was clear of the holster and she was a moment away from shooting her assailant in the leg when his scent hit her and she produced a muffled growl of irritation that prompted a deep chuckle from the man with his arms wrapped around her. His hand left her mouth, she tilted her head back, and his lips replaced it. Her arm wrapped up around his neck, pulling him closer. "Damn it Pierce, that wasn't funny," Vette murmured when their lips finally parted. "I almost shot you."

The hulking redhead grinned. "Actually the look on your face was pretty funny," he said. "Wish I'd recorded it for posterity."

Vette smiled sweetly and then drove her small fist into his ribs below his breastplate, where a band of flexible material mated it to the lower armor plates. She had the satisfaction of seeing him wince. "Work now, play later," she chided him before stepping past him into the structure he had dragged her into. "This is it?"

Pierce nodded. "This is the only one of Quinn's safe houses that Baras and Cyl didn't find."

It hadn't taken Vette and Pierce long after arriving on Dromund Kaas to discover that Malavai Quinn and Zane weren't there. Where they had gone proved more difficult to ferret out. Information about Quinn was restricted above a level that either of them could slice, and their investigation had hit a dead end when they received help from an unusual source. It seemed that the information Shen had received about Imperial Intelligence being less than pleased with Darth Baras' ascension was accurate, because they had been approached by a Cipher agent who offered them some information and a lead.

After returning to Dromund Kaas with his infant son, Quinn had continued some duties for Baras but had devoted most of his time to raising Zane, up until the day three years later when both had simply vanished. While Quinn's exact fate was unknown, it was known to intelligence that he had been declared persona non grata by Baras at that time, and his apartment as well as most of his bolt holes had been raided by Imperial troops.

The Cipher also provided them with the location of one of Quinn's hiding places that Baras' spies hadn't found. It was that safe house that Pierce and Vette now stood in. They explored the compact but functional apartment, wary of traps or hidden defenses. They located none of the above, finding it to be long abandoned.

When they explored the bedroom, the sophisticated terminal on the desk powered up in response to their presence. Vette recognized the system type as one designed for military intelligence use, virtually impossible to slice or safely disassemble. Sitting down in front of it, she noted that the welcome screen wasn't asking for a password. Instead, once she sat down a concealed scanner above the terminal played a green light over the room, scanning her and Pierce. "What was that?" Vette exclaimed, jumping to her feet. With a hiss, all the doors in the apartment slid shut, trapping them in the room.

"Hello, Vette," a quarter size hologram of Quinn said as it was projected in the air over the desk. "I almost hesitated to make a recording for this eventuality; I viewed the likelihood of your finding this place as remote, at best. Unfortunately, that means that it's far more likely that you're here as Baras' prisoner than on your own. I hope Baras or Cyl accompanied you into the safe house. If so, the baradium explosives wired into this terminal should kill them as well as you in a few seconds. I'm sorry it had to end like this." The little hologram of Quinn was replaced by a countdown with thirty seconds on the clock.

Vette and Pierce exchanged an alarmed glance, then both of them drew their blasters and opened fire on the door, but the material was reinforced durasteel and their attacks didn't have any effect. Giving up on that, Pierce drew his vibroblade and tried to cut through the metal, but an energy shield sprang up over it, frustrating his attempts. With seconds left, his vibroblade broke under the strain. As the final seconds counted down their eyes met.

"I love you," Vette said quietly, lowering her blasters hopelessly.

"I know," Pierce replied. The timer hit zero, and they closed their eyes, bracing themselves for oblivion.

Oblivion proved to be anticlimactic, as nothing exploded. Looking up in confusion, they saw the timer simply disappear. A moment later the sealed doors quietly slid open.

"A dud?" Pierce asked himself, puzzled. Granted the trap had been waiting for a few years, but everything he knew about Quinn said that shouldn't matter.

Then his train of thought was interrupted as Vette smacked him upside the head. "'I know'? What kind of lame response is that? I said I love you, and 'I know' is all I get you furry ape? I'm going to-"

That was as far as she got before Pierce swept her up in a crushing embrace, laughing. "I love you, Vette," he said, kissing her deeply, longingly. "I love you and we're alive and I love you."

Before Vette could respond the terminal came back to life, Quinn's hologram appearing again. "Sorry about that," Quinn said lightly. "I had to make sure you really were here free of coercion. The baradium bomb is actually under the floor. It's big enough to take out the whole city block, and keyed to detonate if someone tried to use a lightsaber or the Force to open the doors."

Pierce and Vette looked at each other. "I'm so going to hurt that smug son of a bitch when we find him," Pierce growled.

A seemingly featureless section of the desk slid open, revealing a small, armored case with a number of data chips inside. "Zane is safe. Of that much I have made sure. The message I've included in this package for Shen will allow her to find him, if she lives. I hope that your presence here means she is well." Quinn's expression was grave. "In spite of my efforts I don't know where Shen is or if she's still alive. If she sent you, give this data to her and it will help her do what must be done. If she didn't send you…" sadness was plain on Quinn's small holographic face, "give this data to whoever can hurt Baras and Cyl; a rival on the Dark Council, Keeper of Imperial Intelligence, or the Jedi as a last resort if Baras no longer has enemies within the Empire." Holo-Quinn paused. "If Shen is dead, don't look for Zane. I have sent him beyond Baras' reach, and he will be raised by those to whom I have entrusted his safety. Goodbye."

The hologram of Quinn disappeared again, and was replaced by a recorded projection of space above Dromund Kaas, downloaded automatically to the terminal by a traffic control satellite. The recording was three years old. Pierce and Vette were puzzled at first, but as they watched, they understood.

* * *

_Pride's Fall – Deep Space_

Shen woke gradually as sunlight played across her face. She had found time to have her hair cut short again save for the two red-wrapped braids that framed her face. Lying on her side, Shen could see out the wide viewport of her cabin. One distant star was brighter than the others, an unnamed sun near which her fleet was currently staging. She could see a few other ships with the naked eye, and knew that there were more out of sight.

Shen got up, sitting on the edge of the bed and stretching with fluid grace, glancing over her shoulder at the room's other bed. Linse's tattooed brow furrowed slightly in her sleep, and she curled up slightly, sinking deeper into the pale sheets, her long, shimmering black hair fanned out behind her like a wave. The Miralian woman's throat produced a soft whimper of distress before Shen rose and walked to her bedside, leaning over to gently shake Linse's shoulder. Sleepy purple eyes opened, focusing on Shen. "It's morning," Shen told Linse quietly, then headed for the refresher to get cleaned up as Linse stretched lazily and sat up in bed.

Linse had been sharing Shen's quarters since shortly after her arrival on the _Pride's Fall_. The Miralian woman's first few nights on the ship after Vette left months earlier had been plagued by lack of sleep and nightmares that woke her screaming and hysterical. The ship's medical staff was at a loss for what to do for her, since Linse refused to take tranquilizers, understandably terrified of being drugged after her experiences in Purgatory. Some of the gentler Force techniques Shen had learned proved more effective, but only while she remained in the traumatized Miralian's presence. Since Vette cared for Linse so much, Shen simply invited her to stay in her quarters.

It hadn't taken the crew long to assume that Shen had taken the beautiful Miralian as a lover, a typically male conclusion that amused both of them. Shen didn't care if her subordinates believed it, and if it prevented her ship's mostly male crew from harassing Linse – who was one of just a few non-Sith women on board – so much the better.

Once she had showered, Shen left the refresher to don her armor, and Linse slipped in as soon as she left. Running diagnostics on her cybernetics and putting on her power armor was a morning ritual for Shen that took some time, so she was just sealing up the armor when Linse emerged from the refresher, her lithe body and long hair wrapped up in towels.

Linse was getting dressed and Shen was about to leave when she remembered something that she had forgotten to give to the other woman the previous night. Picking up a datapad from her desk, she tossed it to Linse, who caught it deftly with a quizzical look.

"You passed," Shen informed her roommate. "Commander Bulo will be expecting you on the _Tattered Wraith_ at 0800." Linse grinned, almost bouncing with excitement. The _Tattered Wraith_ was an aging Imperial frigate that had served as one of the Imperial Fleet's training vessels. Stolen from dry dock and crewed with men loyal to Shen, it now served the same purpose for Shen's forces, training recruits without martial skills. Linse, already a knowledgeable pilot, had been accepted into the accelerated training program for combat piloting.

"Thank you, Shen," Linse said.

Shen shook her head. "You earned it. I ordered Lieutanant Hayes to submit your scores anonymously. You placed at the top of the prospective candidates all on your own."

Linse departed to catch the shuttle to the _Tattered Wraith_, and Shen watched her go, reflecting on what she'd learned of the Miralian's past. Shen had been surprised and angered to learn that Linse hadn't even broken Imperial law to wind up in Purgatory. She had been the pilot of a civilian freighter who had caught the eye of Warden Harloc when her ship was delivering supplies to the prison. Harloc had responded to her refusal of his crude propositions by impounding her ship, arresting her crewmates and trumping up bogus smuggling charges against them. Linse had pled guilty to the imaginary crimes to save her crewmates even though it would deliver her into Harloc's clutches, a brave choice that impressed Shen.

* * *

_Pride's Fall – Bridge_

Shen was alone in the spartan meditation chamber that formed the heart of the Rakata ship. The Imperial officers who crewed the ship were still getting used to the unique nature of the vessel's operation. On Shen's orders the Rakata droids had retrofitted the former Imperial prison command center into a set of stations for Imperial crew members and offered them control over select ship systems, but most of the functions of the _Pride's Fall_ in combat still occurred in the empty room where Shen communed with the Force-sensitive Rakata computer. It was there that a tickling on the edge of her awareness informed her of Vette and Pierce's return, and it was there that she instructed the computer to direct them.

"Talk to me," Shen demanded from her spot inside the floating halo of glowing Rakata controls when they entered. "What did you find?" She'd been sensing their emotions ever since they returned, and the mixture of sadness and fading shock worried her.

Standing before Shen, Pierce and Vette exchanged a glance. Then Pierce just said, "We tracked down a safe house where Quinn left some data for you, and a message. It's probably best for you to just see it." Stepping over to the hovering ring's main holodisplay, Pierce slipped a data chip into the receiver.

A life-sized holo of Quinn sprang into existence, and Shen took half a step back when it looked directly at her, half a dozen emotions roiling inside her. "There's so much I have to say to you Shen, but here's the most important thing: Zane is safe. I knew that Baras or Cyl would eventually take him from me, so I sent him beyond their reach. While you were pregnant we discussed possibilities if the worst happened and Baras discovered Zane's existence. One suggestion in particular that you made I dismissed as 'the craziest thing I've ever heard.' Ironically, that's what I decided to do. I know you will know where to look for our son."

Wide-eyed, Shen felt her legs give way, and sat down heavily in the command chair she'd had installed inside the control halo. Pierce paused the recording, and Vette ducked under the halo, kneeling beside Shen. "Are you okay?" the Twi'lek woman asked with concern.

Shen nodded. "I know what he's talking about. It's just… why would he do that after betraying me for Baras' favor?"

"There's more," Pierce said gravely, resuming the playback.

The eyes of Quinn's projection seemed to bore into Shen. "I love you, Shen. I always will. I will go to my grave regretting what happened on Zonju V, and I can only hope for your forgiveness. Baras found us there before I was ever aware of it. He waited until your pregnancy had made you too weak to fight before contacting me and demanding that I deliver you to him or die with you and our child. Perhaps I should have told you. Maybe you would have made the same decision, but I'll never know." Quinn sighed. "Shen, if you're seeing this rather than speaking to me in person, I am dead. Baras knows I have betrayed him by sending Zane to safety and gathering the information contained on these other data chips. I'm going to leave Dromund Kaas tonight, and I won't allow myself to be captured. If I don't make it… remember that I will love you always."

The hologram of Quinn faded, replaced by the recording from Dromund Kaas orbit that Pierce and Vette had seen. The _Fury_ streaked up from the atmosphere into view, shields glowing from multiple laser strikes as a cloud of Imperial fighters pursued. It spun and weaved around other ships as nearby Imperial cruisers opened fire with their turbolasers. It was an impressive and beautiful display of piloting, a feat few in the Empire or Republic could match, but it couldn't last forever. No one could evade half the Imperial fleet forever. One turbolaser strike hit the _Fury _andthen another before the ship exploded violently in a golden fireball. Shen shuddered in her seat, feeling as she saw the image what the well of Force energy on Belsavis had prevented her from sensing years ago: echoes of Malavai Quinn's death, reverberating through the Force.

Shen sat still long after the hologram of Quinn faded, her face devoid of expression. The light in the room gradually dimmed, and the glowing control ring faded and sank back into the floor. "Leave me," Shen said quietly, her voice flat and empty.

Pierce and Vette exchanged a concerned look. "Shen-," Vette started to say, reaching out to touch her.

"Get out!" Shen yelled, her voice fraying. She drew back from Vette's touch, and the Twi'lek woman gasped as a Force push propelled her into Pierce's arms as the door behind them opened.

"I'm sorry, Shen," Vette said quietly. Then the pair retreated, and the heavy door slid shut behind them.

Shen stood, shaking slightly. Then she screamed, and a Force-enhanced shockwave of sound capable of bowling over armored men shook the chamber. The air in the room stirred, then began swirling around the center where Shen stood. Sparks and forks of electricity arced between the walls and the angry whirlwind. Shen screamed again, and the walls vibrated.

Remorse and grief tore through Shen like a knife through the gut as the impossible, painful truth attacked her mind. Quinn hadn't betrayed her. Shen didn't know if she would have had the courage to do what he did. Pain and rage warred inside her, and darkness boiled through the Force and out of her in a reddish-black aura of power, seeking an outlet. Shen's eyes settled on the command chair, and the metal squealed and then tore as monumental pressure reduced it to a ball of scrap metal. Fury spent for the moment, Shen fell to her knees and felt hot tears fall from her eyes.

For just a while, alone and away from those who needed her to lead, Shen allowed herself a moment to be broken, to mourn for her loss. There would be time enough later to put the mask back on, to be the untouchable warrior and leader again. Time enough to make Cyl and Baras pay. There would be time enough to retrieve her son from those keeping him safe before they did too much damage to his impressionable mind. For the moment, she wept, allowing herself to feel the pain, letting it harden her. This too gave her strength in the Force.


	15. Precious Cargo

_Author's Note: Sorry it's been so long since my last update; work has been a beast. I'm hoping to have more time to write over the holidays. Enjoy!_

* * *

**Chapter Fifteen: Precious Cargo**

_Tython – Low Orbit_

A bulky civilian transport broke orbit above the Jedi home world of Tython and began its descent to the planet's surface. The vessel, christened the _Light of Agamar_, was built with soft, flowing lines typical of the Republic's approach to starship engineering.

Shen found the ship's design as weak and contemptible as the Republic itself, but she was forced to make do. She commanded multiple vessels of her own, strong Imperial ships, but she could hardly bring them here. Even sitting in the _Light of Agamar's_ passenger compartment and looking out of the viewport with an unaided eye, she could see several Republic warships. Tython was not as heavily defended as Coruscant, but the Jedi were plainly ready for a surprise attack by the Empire. Shen also knew that the planet's ground-based fighter squadrons, with the multitude of Jedi pilots available, would make the world a difficult target; there was a reason Darth Baras hadn't attempted the attack the Jedi were wary of.

Tython, the birthplace of the Jedi Order, was perhaps the craziest place in the galaxy for a lone Sith to attempt to travel. Most Sith wouldn't have even made it as far as the civilian transport that would soon be landing at one of the planet's few spaceports, near the Jedi Temple. Shen was aware of two Jedi in the next compartment over, a master and Padawan. They had surely sensed her as well, but one of the benefits of Shen's hard-won balance in the Force was the ability to perform the same trick Grendil Torbaane had used to fool her fellow Jedi for years; Shen's Force aura was wrapped in light, the darkness of her negative emotions suppressed and hidden.

Constant concentration provided Shen with a disguise for her Force aura, but a Sith as famous as she was had to take other measures to avoid detection. Few Jedi who had faced her in battle had survived, but her years in the field and rise to prominence meant that her distinctive face was known in the Republic; for a time it had festooned wanted posters that had been offering impressive sums for proof of her capture or death. Her long imprisonment had lead most in the Republic to conclude she was dead, but Tython's cities, like those in all the Republic's Core Worlds, was dotted with holocams that ran facial recognition programs, and the droid brains watching through those mechanical eyes had longer memories than organics.

So the passenger manifest for the seat Shen occupied listed one Shir Corlugg, Findsman of Gand, as the passenger of record. Shen's body was covered by an armored exoskeleton, the design of which suggested that the occupant had an _actual_ exoskeleton underneath. The bulbous helmet with the faceted, widely placed optical sensors was instantly recognizable on most travelled worlds as the garb of one of the mysterious ammonia-breathing aliens from the world that shared the name of the species; Gand.

Pierce was sitting in the next seat over, wearing the armor of a Republic trooper. Shen would have liked to have Vette along, but the crimson-skinned Twi'lek's Sith tattoos were too distinctive, and an elaborate disguise for two members of the group was too risky. Pierce, having been a black ops trooper before entering Shen's service, didn't have a face on record in the Republic's databases, nor was he famous enough to be recognized.

"Still can't believe you and Quinn cooked this up," Pierce commented quietly.

"I wasn't entirely serious when I suggested the idea to Quinn, but there's merit in it. Baras would never look for Zane here, and even if he knew, his reach doesn't extend this far." Shen's voice came out as a raspy buzz recycled through a translation module in the helmet to produce the voice of a Gand speaking Basic.

Years earlier, Quinn had spirited Zane away from Dromund Kaas and brought him to a Republic border world, where he arranged to be present when Jedi visited to check the populace for Force sensitive children. Allowing their son to be taken by the Jedi was far from an ideal solution, but it had the virtue of being a choice Baras could never predict; he was far too selfish to anticipate that Shen would rather give Zane up than allow him to fall into uncaring Sith hands.

Of course, now that Shen was free and on the path to deposing Baras, she couldn't leave her son in the hands of the Jedi any longer; retrieving him before he was irrevocably poisoned by the Jedi's naïve ideals was imperative.

The transport landed without incident at the spaceport outside the Jedi Temple, and the passengers were allowed to disembark and queue for planetary customs. Outside Shen could sense more Jedi, a handful in the immediate vicinity and dozens throughout the spaceport. Focusing on her mask of light, she moved forward, with Pierce moving to a separate queue.

When she reached the end of her line and submitted her documentation, the clerk – a petite, pretty woman with black hair and pale gray eyes – blinked in surprise. "Aah… Findsman Shir Corlugg of Gand?"

"That is Shir's name," Shen replied in the humble, self-effacing manner of the Gand.

"What is the purpose of your trip to Tython, Findsman?" the clerk asked politely. In the corner of the HUD inside her helmet, Shen saw one of the pair of Jedi supervising the screening of passengers glance in Shen's direction and head over with a steady, confident gait. He was a pale-skinned human male with crew-cut brown hair and a broad, muscular frame dressed in tan Jedi robes.

"Shir has come to this world for the purpose of recreational hunting."

"Ah. I trust you have permits for your weapons?" The clerk eyed the blaster rifle slung across Shen's back and the wicked-looking vibroknife at her belt. The clerk's brow furrowed at the lightsaber also attached to Shen's belt, but as those weren't subject to permit, she didn't inquire further.

Shen wordlessly offered up the paperwork; like all of her documentation they were Intelligence-grade forgeries backed up by actual accounts sliced into the Republic's Holonet registries, and would stand up to all but the most rigorous inspection.

As the clerk tapped away at her terminal, the Jedi whose attention Shen had caught arrived, tapping the clerk on the shoulder and murmuring to her. The woman nodded, and returned Shen's papers to her.

"If you would be so kind as to step through the scanner?" the Jedi asked politely in a mellow baritone.

Shen stepped through the sophisticated sensor booth. This was the first real test of her disguise. Armor that looked like what a Gand would wear was easy. Armor with integrated sensor baffles that would trick a penetrating sensor suite into believing that there was an insectoid Gand rather than a human cyborg inside was hard. When alarms didn't go off, and the Jedi and the sensor operator glanced at the display blandly without any alarm or surprise, Shen relaxed a bit. The Jedi waved her through the booth, and lead her to a private screening room. She saw Pierce pass through inspection with his forged military ID before the door closed. Inside the spare room a second Jedi was waiting, this one a short dark-skinned human woman with a shaved head dressed in gray Jedi robes.

"Please, have a seat," the male Jedi said, while making no move to sit himself.

"Apologies, noble Jedi. Shir has been sitting for some time on the transport, and would prefer to stand," Shen replied calmly. _Dominance games, Jedi? Your kind is too nice to do this well._

"All right." The male Jedi paused, peering at Shen, and she could feel both of them probing at her mental defenses subtly, through the Force. She blocked the probes with ease, making no outward sign.

"Your papers are all in order, Findsman, but we can't help being curious. There is no record of a Jedi by your name."

"Shir is not a Jedi." Truth, pure and simple, and Shen let them feel it in her aura.

The pair exchanged a glance between each other, and the woman's glance lingered on the lightsaber Shen carried. "But you are trained in the Force," the dusky-skinned woman spoke for the first time. "Quite strongly."

_Now we come to the heart of it,_ Shen thought with satisfaction. Disguising her talents in the dark side was one thing. Veiling her Force sensitivity entirely was impossible, and impersonating a Jedi on their home world, where they stored the records of their membership would be extremely risky.

Shen spread her hands inoffensively. "Shir has been gifted with the Force, yes. Not all who feel the Force on Gand are called to serve the Jedi." Another truth, and a reason for disguising herself as a member of the species. There were few Gand Jedi, and since Gand itself was an independent world and had a climate that was inhospitable to species not native to the planet, few Jedi scouts visited the world to locate Force-sensitive children. Most Force-sensitive Gand were raised as Findsmen, an ancient order of shamanistic bounty hunters and law-givers.

"Yet you wear a lightsaber," the female Jedi stated. Shen focused on the shorter woman. _She's the one in charge here. Not the man who was outside, scanning passengers for trouble._

Shen surprised the Jedi by plucking the lightsaber from her belt and extending it hilt-first to the other woman. "Take it if you wish, noble Jedi. Shir did not build it. Shir has only carried it for a time." This was also truth. The blade was not her own, but a weapon she had taken from one of the dissident Sith who challenged her leadership on the _Pride's Fall_.

The Jedi took it in hand, examining the crafting of the blade. Her eyes narrowed as she ignited the lightsaber and took in the red beam. "This is a Sith lightsaber." It was not a question.

"Shir had the misfortune of crossing paths with a Sith some time ago," Shen explained. "This Sith believed Shir to be inferior and unworthy of the Force's gift. This Sith attempted to kill Shir with that lightsaber. Shir proved to be stronger than the Sith believed; when the Sith was dead, Shir took the Sith's weapon as a warning to others of his kind." The Sith Shen had killed on _Pride's Fall_ had tried to kill her, and she had claimed their blades as a warning. As Jedi philosophers were fond of saying 'it was all true, _from a certain point of view'_.

The Jedi's tension eased as she told the story and they sensed the truth of her words. Their Force probes withdrew. The female Jedi smiled faintly as she deactivated the saber and returned it. "Far be it for me to deny a hunter her prize. If I may ask, what are you here to hunt?"

"Shir wishes to hunt the beasts known as horranth; Shir is told that their numbers swell in the mountains to the south, in need of culling. If Shir is fortunate, perhaps an opportunity will arise to test Shir's strength against one of the dark beasts of Tython. Shir believes the creatures have been categorized as a hazard to this world's people."

The male Jedi nodded, taking up the thread of conversation. "The dark beasts are a menace, and you should be careful if you intend to seek one out; they're deadly, and resistant to the Force."

The Jedi had no more questions for her, and they let Shen leave the spaceport, where she rejoined Pierce and they stepped out into the afternoon sun. Taking the planet in through her helmet's HUD, Shen was struck by the oddity of her presence. _I might very well by the first Sith to set foot on this planet in a millennium or more._ Shaking off the irrelevant musings, she set out with Pierce, who had claimed their luggage. They visited an airspeeder dealer and rented a rugged model suitable for travel in the wilds of Tython. Shen took the controls and navigated a course out of the city while Pierce went to work under the vehicle's dashboard disabling the rental agency's vehicle transponder, slicing in a piece of code that would transmit false coordinates.

Shen didn't know how Grendil Torbaane had managed to maintain her Force disguise while sleeping, and had been unable to replicate the trick. That meant that she couldn't just rent a room in town; she had to get far enough away from the Jedi that her latent dark side power wouldn't be sensed once she was unconscious. A planet full of Jedi meant that few places would be safe to sleep, but a Force-rich world like Tython also tended to provide exactly the sort of place Shen was seeking. After a few more minutes of flying Shen sensed what she was hoping to find, and changed course to intercept.

As they drew close, Shen saw faint light from a handful of open fires at the location she was sensing. Checking the scanners revealed a small encampment; strictly low tech with a few dozen biosigns. It was surrounded by a log palisade in a semi-circle against a granite cliff, and inside were a handful of huts as well as a cave stretching back into the cliff. On a quick over flight, Shen and Pierce could see ugly, stocky humanoids with sagging, wrinkled skin, fang-filled mouths and beady black eyes on the end of short stalks on the sides of their hammer-like heads. Most were armed with metal swords, although a few had primitive, worn blasters.

"Lovely looking species," Pierce commented as Shen brought the speeder in for a landing inside the palisade, the primitives growling and brandishing weapons. "Are we here to make friends?"

"No. The Flesh Raiders are hostile, and even if they wanted peace we couldn't trust them to keep it. Kill them all; we need this encampment. If you see one with ornate attire it may be Force-sensitive, and I'll handle it." The area, and particularly the cave in the cliff exuded dark side power; the cave was a natural locus of Force energy that would keep Shen's presence hidden while she slept. She just had to evict the current residents first.

The fight was short, bloody and one-sided. The Flesh Raiders' blasters weren't strong enough to penetrate Shen and Pierce's shields, and his return fire and her deadly blade work finished their opponents quickly. True to Shen's suspicions a Flesh Raider did emerge from the cave towards the end of the battle, but the creature's poorly trained Force powers were no match for a Sith of her power; she laughed off its feeble lightning strikes, slammed it into the cliff wall with a Force blow and decapitated the shaman before it could recover.

Once all the Flesh Raiders were dead it was nightfall. Pierce stoked one of the fires, while Shen used the Force to lift Flesh Raider corpses one by one and impale them on the sharpened tips of the logs forming the palisade, placing the shaman's head on a spike over the gate. "That should encourage the rest of their kind to keep their distance for a while."

Returning to the speeder, Pierce opened one of the cases they had brought with them and activated the half-dozen fist-sized spherical droids within. After a moment's programming they lifted into the air on silent repulsors and flew out into the dark. The scout droids would patrol the area around the encampment and warn them if any threats approached.

By the time Shen and Pierce had made the cave habitable it was late, and they prepared a simple meal before going to sleep.

* * *

Finding one six-year old Padawan on Tython, a planet that was home to most of the Jedi-in-training in the galaxy, was not an easy task. It would have been simple if Shen actually possessed the credentials of a Jedi, but she didn't, and their private networks were far more secure than the Republic's much larger databases; slicing false identities to get onto the planet had been child's play but slicing the Jedi's personnel systems would be a far more daunting challenge.

The simplest way would have been to defeat a Jedi and take their codes, a step Shen would not have hesitated to take on another world, but on Tython, the Force disturbance of murdering a Jedi would alert thousands more of the event, and keeping a subdued Jedi captive for days or more was not something Shen wished to attempt. In the end, Shen and Pierce simply spent a day in the wilderness between two large Jedi enclaves, locating, digging up and physically slicing into one of the underground quantum fiber trunk lines that the Jedi used for secure communications. Breaking the encryption took half a day, and since they could only observe traffic passing through the lines, it was another two days before the piece of information they were looking for was caught by their detection software.

Shen, divested of her Gand disguise and wearing gray Jedi robes, was practicing saber forms to familiarize herself with the green-bladed Jedi lightsaber she had brought along if she needed to impersonate one away from established settlements. She was also keeping a mental eye out for any Jedi or natives nearby.

When the terminal hooked into the trunk line pinged, Pierce, who had been napping, woke instantly at the sound, leaning over the computer and examining what it had found. "My Lord, I think we have a winner." As she walked over to look over Pierce's shoulder, he pulled up a set of personnel profiles. The transmission had been a routine logging of a field mission and checkout of a shuttle by a Jedi Knight taking a pair of Padawans out into the mountains on the next continent over for survival training.

The Jedi Knight's name in her profile was Cerria Coll, and Shen saw a picture of a tall, skinny nineteen-year old human woman with pale white skin, bright red hair cut just below her ears, merry green eyes and a face full of freckles dressed in tan Jedi robes. The first Padawan was a thirteen year old, purple-skinned Rodian female named Reeli. The second Padawan… Shen's breath caught in her throat at the large, dark eyes of the six year old boy with light brown skin in the holoimage, his hair cut short save for the Padawan braid falling over his shoulder. "Name of record, Mathieu Brennin," Pierce said aloud as he read the profile. "Doesn't mean anything; Quinn wouldn't have given the Jedi Zane's real name." He kept reading. "Birth date is a few months off, but Quinn would have falsified that too. Planet of origin… edge of Republic space. Looks like a planet Quinn would have picked."

Shen forced herself not to hope too much just yet. "How many children Zane's age and skin tone has the sniffer program registered so far?"

Pierce glanced at another table on the display. "Almost fifty in the Jedi records; twenty or so actually on Tython, but this is the first one that the facial recognition software has registered as a probable match for you and Quinn."

Shen reached out into the Force, searching for certainty but finding none. "This is the best lead yet. We'll find him and get a DNA sample to verify."

Pierce nodded. "Should I pack up the surveillance gear and rebury the line?"

Shen shook her head. "Let the computer keep collecting data for now. Set one of the drones to detonate and destroy it if anyone comes sniffing around. Let's go." Minutes later they were in the air and headed for the mountains a continent away where a little boy that Shen hoped was her son waited.

The sun was low in the sky when they reached the mountains where the Jedi were conducting survival exercises. Pierce guided the airspeeder low over the peaks and valleys while keeping his eye on the scanners for signs of humanoids; Shen's eyes were closed as she reached out through the Force, searching for the Jedi they sought. Shen sensed a trio of bright Force auras at the same time as she sensed a much larger, disparate mass of negative emotion elsewhere nearby. "Odd," Pierce said, and Shen opened her eyes, glancing at the sensor displays. "There's a large group of humanoids, several hundred, moving up this valley, but we're hundreds of kilometers from the nearest settlement."

"More Flesh Raiders," Shen observed tightly, "and they're closing in on those Jedi." Even as she spoke, she felt alarm spike through the bright auras of the Jedi.

"I can see them now," Pierce said. Peering out into the hills at the end of the valley, Shen got a glimpse of lightsaber blades, one yellow and one blue. "Detecting weapons fire," Pierce added.

"Get us over the Jedi, now," Shen ordered, unbuckling her safety harness and keying the door open. The wind hit her, roaring through the cabin. Shen leaned over to view the ground blurring below them, and when she spotted the lightsabers and a cluster of Flesh Raiders unloading blasters in their direction, she tipped out of the vehicle and plummeted to the forest floor.

One hundred and twenty kilograms of irritated cyborg hit the ground a few seconds later, dropping to one knee and redirecting the energy of the fall outward, amplifying it with the Force into a powerful shockwave that sent Flesh Raiders flying in every direction. Rising to her feet, Shen ignited the green blade of her pilfered lightsaber and hurled it in an arc, slaying half a dozen of the ugly aliens as they struggled to rise before returning it to her hand and sprinting towards the Jedi.

When Shen caught up with them, Cerria was holding Mathieu in one arm and a poison-yellow lightsaber in the other. The Rodian girl, Reeli, had a shorter blue lightsaber in hand. Both Jedi were moving away from the mass of pursuing Flesh Raiders, but they were slowed by carrying Mathieu and the need to stop and bat away stray blaster bolts with their blades.

"Master!" Cerria gasped, pausing when she saw Shen. "Thank the Force you found us-"

"No time," Shen interrupted. "There are hundreds of them coming up the valley. We need to get to higher ground, up above the tree line. Give me the boy." Cerria hesitated only a moment before handing over Mathieu. Shen hugged the obviously frightened boy to herself with one arm, gently filling his mind with a soothing Force touch. _Are you Zane? Are you my little boy?_ Shen thought privately, but couldn't tell, and castigated herself for being terrible mother. _I don't even know what my son feels like in the Force. I only got to hold him for a moment._

"What's the plan," Cerria asked, catching her breath in moments once relieved of her burden. Shen was able to carry Mathieu and run faster than the younger Jedi, so they were able to make a better pace running up the mountain, and Shen could deflect lucky blaster shots from their pursuers without having to see them or stop.

"Pierce, have you found a defensible spot yet?" Shen inquired into her comlink. She got an answer when the airspeeder roared overhead and settled on a rock outcropping half a kilometer further up the mountain. Pierce climbed out of the airspeeder, dropped to his stomach on the lip of the ledge, and unlimbered his sniper rifle. Soon blaster bolts were flying down the slope over their heads, picking off Flesh Raiders who got too close. "The plan is we get up there. If the Flesh Raiders are smart, they'll run."

"There's a whole war band chasing us, master. They surprised us this morning, and they've been chasing us since," Cerria admitted. "What if they charge us?"

"They won't survive," Shen said quietly, and Cerria looked at her in shock. The Knight had assumed her to be a Jedi Master based on her age and obvious power, but Shen felt the Jedi really _sensing_ her strength for the first time. The young redhead swallowed hard and nodded.

When they reached the ledge with Pierce, Shen gazed down the mountain. The tree line was a few hundred meters below them, and the Flesh Raiders were pouring out of the trees by the dozen, roaring, charging up the hill and firing blasters at them. Most of the fire was inaccurate, and three lightsabers were more than enough to deflect what came close.

Shen set Mathieu down on his feet, crouching beside him. "Can you go sit in the speeder for me, young man?" Mathieu glanced at Cerria, who nodded. He ran over on his short legs, climbing into the armored cabin of the speeder. Shen keyed the door closed remotely. "He doesn't need to see what happens next," Shen murmured loud enough for Cerria to hear, before deactivating her lightsaber and stepping up to the ledge's lip beside Pierce. Drawing a deep breath, Shen drew copious amounts of Force energy in as well, and she heard startled exclamations from Cerria and Reeli. When breath and Force reached a peak Shen let it go in a primal scream down the slope at the charging Flesh Raiders.

Apprentice Sith warriors were taught to use the Force to augment a scream to stun a single opponent at close range. What Shen directed at the Flesh Raiders was a bonfire next to the candle of that technique. The shockwave physically bowled over more than twenty Flesh Raiders and stopped the rest in their tracks, bellowing in agony. Shen could see blood trickling from the ears of a number of the aliens. "Come on you fools, give up. No one else needs to die," she murmured for Cerria's benefit. Left to her own devices Shen would have proceeded to wipe out the rest of the brutes without pause, but she was pretending to be a foolishly sentimental Jedi Master who would seek to spare even lives as worthless as these.

Shen's false hopes went unanswered as the creatures roared and resumed their charge, more pouring from the trees. "I tried," she said with regret that wasn't exactly heartfelt. Then she gathered the power of the Force once more, channeling it into one clenched fist. When visible light seeped from between her fingers, she turned to Pierce, Cerria and Reeli. "Get back to the speeder." Seeing the grim look on her face they didn't argue, scrambling down off of the ledge. Shen followed them, and when she reached the base of the angular outcropping she turned and drove her fist into the ground, releasing the stored energy.

This shockwave burrowed into the ground, shattering the already fractured rock of the ledge and sending countless large, jagged boulders tumbling down the slope. Propelled to a significant velocity by the Force blast they tore through the Flesh Raiders like a scythe through wheat. They barely slowed upon reaching the tree line, and the avalanche continued into the forest, crushing the marauding war band of Flesh Raiders.

Shen rose to her feet and gazed down the slope. When the dust cleared all that remained were the dead and the dying, ruins of bodies and trees littering the mountainside. Reeli pressed a hand to her proboscis, and Shen sensed Cerria suppressing her own nausea. "Let's go," Shen said. "You have a vehicle nearby?"

Cerria nodded shakily. "Shuttle; next valley over." They all boarded the airspeeder, and Pierce lifted off with Reeli giving him directions to the shuttle. Shen, Cerria and Mathieu sat in the back. The boy clung to Cerria as soon as she climbed in, and Shen felt a twinge in her chest at the sight. "We're fortunate you and your companion found us, Master…" the young Jedi trailed off inquisitively.

"My name is Shen," she replied. "My friend here is Lieutenant Pierce."

"Master Shen. I'm Knight Cerria and these are Padawans Mathieu and Reeli," Cerria said.

"What are you doing out here, Cerria?" Shen asked, maintaining the fiction that she didn't already know.

"Survival training," Cerria answered with a scowl. "There weren't supposed to be any Flesh Raiders out here; the satellite sweeps listed this area as clear. Some of the Masters who study them think that the Flesh Raiders have learned that we can see them from orbit and are using caves and forest canopies to hide their movements."

Pierce landed the airspeeder in the clearing where the Jedi had parked their shuttle as night fell. "It's late to head back to the Temple, and the Flesh Raiders shouldn't give us any more trouble. Shall we share a meal and camp here tonight?" Shen offered. She needed to confirm Mathieu's identity before Cerria spirited him off to the Temple.

Cerria looked like she'd rather return immediately, but deferred to Shen, and helped her prepare some food from their shared stores. Over the meal, as Mathieu and Reeli got used to her, Shen noticed both children directing curious glances at her face and other prosthetics; they could probably sense that in addition to the obvious metal in her face, much of her body was inorganic. Cerria also looked intrigued, but was more subtle about it, not staring as the children were.

"You're wondering why I look like this," Shen said, smiling gently at Mathieu and Reeli.

"It's rude to stare," Cerria chided them, looking at Shen apologetically. "They're not used to your style of cybernetics, Master. I can't say I've ever seen augmentations like that on our side of the battlefield."

Shen nodded. She'd expected the question; Sith cybernetics were distinctive from the Republic's variety. It was another reason she couldn't walk around a city or town on Tython with her face bare. "I didn't get them in the Republic," she admitted easily. "A building fell on me on a fairly remote colony world; the only cyberneticists available were Sith-trained. I was unconscious for days; they rebuilt me the best they knew how. I haven't seen a need to have the work redone since; it's a conversation starter, if nothing else." After the meal Pierce collected the dishes; Shen kept Cerria distracted while he pocketed Mathieu's utensils and retreated to the speeder to life a genetic sample off of them.

It was late enough that the children curled up in their sleep rolls in the shuttle and dozed off while Shen and Cerria stayed outside and talked quietly over the small fire. "Have you had many Padawans, master?" the young Jedi asked.

"I've only trained one student," Shen answered freely. "I haven't seen her in years, though. This war has kept us apart since."

Pierce emerged from the speeder then, and handed Shen a datapad wordlessly before sitting down next to them. Shen glanced at it and went still. _Positive match. 99.9% match against both parent gene samples._ Mathieu was Zane. Shen had found her son.

"Good news, master?" Cerria asked, sensing Shen's sudden joy. Shen nodded. Cerria examined her closely, and Shen was surprised to see a shadowed expression cross the young Jedi's face. "You're not a Jedi, are you?" The redhead whispered.

Shen and Pierce both stilled, deadly intent. "What gave me away?" she asked.

Cerria sighed sadly. "The cybernetics made me suspicious, but mostly? I'll never be a frontline fighter; my strengths lie in other areas. Empathy, for one; I see deeply into others. You hide it well, but there's a core of darkness in you, and what you felt just now, looking at that message? I've sensed it once before. The father of a young Padawan managed to get past our security. He found his daughter and tried to take her away. I was that Padawan, and the emotions I sensed in him are in you as well. Looking past the metal in your face, I can see why. Mathieu is your son?"

Shen's gaze grew thoughtful. _So young and she can already sense what Jedi many years her senior could not? That's a rare gift. The Jedi have erred, leaving this one without a minder. She could be as useful as Jaesa was._ Shen glanced at Pierce, who nodded slowly, guessing what she was thinking. "His name is Zane, but yes, he is my son," Shen answered after a pause.

"I can't let you take him," Cerria said with resignation. Shen knew that the Jedi meant it, too. Idealistic young fool that she was, the redheaded Jedi wouldn't hesitate to start a fight she had no chance of winning.

_Your gift is too rare to be lost that way._ Cerria's danger sense worked perfectly well, and she probably sensed Shen's moment of decision. When Shen moved for her Cerria was already reaching for her lightsaber; that was a tactical mistake, as Shen hadn't wasted the fraction of a second drawing her own blade, instead simply tackling the young Jedi and slamming her into the side of the shuttle. Her cybernetic left hand closed around Cerria's right wrist and squeezed with the relentless force of a machine's strength, shattering the bones in her wrist; the young Jedi's lightsaber fell from nerveless hands, unlit. Up close, Shen saw Cerria's already pale face go white as the pain hit her. The redhead's lips parted to scream, and Shen punched her in the throat, not hard enough to shatter the larynx, but enough to close the breathing passage for a moment so the pained cry had nowhere to go. Turning, Shen gripped Cerria's tunic and threw her stumbling towards Pierce, who fired a pair of stun bolts into the Jedi's chest. Cerria slumped to the ground in a heap.

Shen's head turned at a _snap-hiss_ from the open door of the shuttle as Reeli stepped out, blue blade held warily. Cerria! she cried in Rodian, looking at Shen in confusion. Why, master?

"I guess we'll have to take this one, too. No witnesses," Shen decided aloud. Extending a hand, she ripped Reeli's lightsaber from her scaled purple hands with the Force, leaving her defenseless when Pierce fired another pair of stun bolts into the Rodian girl.

Extending her senses toward the shuttle, Shen felt Zane starting to wake, and applied a steady pressure to his mind until he slipped back into slumber. "Get the stun cuffs from the speeder. We'll take their shuttle." Working quickly, Shen and Pierce moved Cerria and Reeli into the passenger compartment. Pierce shackled the young Rodian's wrists and ankles with stun cuffs, while Shen laid Cerria out on the shuttle's fold-out trauma bed, setting the broken bones in her wrist before wrapping a kolto cuff around it to accelerate healing. She also cuffed the Jedi's legs and shackled her good hand to the bed. Standing, she tossed the medkit to Pierce. "Sedate both of them. No point in taking chances." Leaving him to it, Shen moved to the shuttle's cabin.

Sitting down in the pilot's seat, Shen noted with satisfaction that the shuttle was indeed equipped with a hyperdrive. _Good. So much easier than having to track down and steal another ship._ Bringing the reactor online, Shen dialed up the sensors and planetary defense grid. She spent a few minutes studying the disposition of Tython's orbital defenses and the warships in orbit before she saw what she needed and lifted off from the ground. Hovering, she rotated the shuttle 180 degrees, targeted the rental speeder and the camp in the clearing. A few blasts from the shuttle's laser cannon reduced the vehicle and its surroundings to molten slag. Then Shen pointed the shuttle's nose to the sky and punched the engines until the inertial compensators were at their limit.

As soon as she broke atmosphere, the shuttle's comm system lit up. She had not filed a new flight plan with planetary traffic control, and the shuttle was not approved to leave Tython's atmosphere under Cerria's flight plan. "Shuttle XR-09, you are not cleared for departure. Reduce altitude and land at the Temple spaceport immediately." That transmission came from one of the Golan Arms orbital defense stations orbiting Tython. Shen kept heading more or less straight towards it. The thing was armed with enough weapons to take on an Imperial cruiser and win, but unlike the Republic warships nearby it didn't have tractor beams, which was Shen's main concern.

Ignoring the instructions from traffic control, Shen set the navicomputer calculating a short jump from the edge of Tython's gravity well to the edge of the system. That gravity well, unfortunately, extended past the Golan Platform that was locking onto the shuttle as Shen failed to respond. "Shuttle XR-09, reverse course and land immediately or you will be fired upon."

Pierce dropped into the copilot's seat, his eyebrows rising at the transmission and the number of target locks on the instruments. "My Lord, I don't think we'll survive a turbolaser hit in this crate, and we can't avoid one at this range."

"They won't fire," Shen replied calmly. "Open an audio comm channel, set a filter to turn my voice to Shir Corlugg's, and send them a video feed of the passenger hold as well." Once Pierce set that up, sweating a bit, Shen spoke. "This is Findsman Shir Corlugg piloting shuttle XR-09. Shir would recommend pointing your weapons elsewhere, unless the Republic soldiers wish to kill the Padawans and young Jedi aboard."

After a few moments of silence, the next transmission came from one of two Republic warships suddenly changing course to try and intercept them. Shen glanced at the velocity numbers and smiled. They would be in hyperspace before either ship's tractor beams were in range. "This is Captain Vosil of the cruiser _Courageous_. Shut down your engines immediately and we might show you mercy, kidnapper." The man's voice was tense with anger.

"Shir thanks the noble captain for his offer, but declines. If the Republic wishes to retrieve these young Jedi, Shir requests they attend the auction that will be held on Nar Shaddaa. Shir recommends the Republic envoy sent bring a large number of credits." Focusing on Captain Vosil on the_ Courageous_, Shen reached out through the Force, taxing at such a distance even for her. _That's right; believe that you can get them back alive by negotiation or barter. Sure you're in turbolaser range, but you don't want to tell the Council that you killed three innocent young Jedi. They won't blame you._ Shen nudged the man's mind, playing on his respect for the Jedi and his naïve Republic idealism. It wasn't hard; Vosil didn't want to open fire. Shen just made it easier for him to make the decision.

"You'll pay for this, bounty hunter. I promise you that," Captain Vosil threatened as the weapon locks dropped off and the shuttle sailed out of Tython's gravity well.

_Believe whatever you want, captain,_ Shen thought sardonically as the pulled the lever and jumped into hyperspace with her precious cargo; her son, an extra Padawan and an intriguing young Jedi.


	16. Covert and Overt

**Chapter Sixteen: Covert and Overt**

_Two years later_

_Corellia – Coronet City_

The Coronet City spaceport was the busiest on the planet, one of the most trafficked outside of Coruscant itself. The military wing of the spaceport alone took up more space than some cities on other worlds.

Hanger 146-A, devoted to the storage and maintenance of assault shuttles utilized by the Republic's troopers for rapid insertion onto hostile worlds, was mostly empty. Nineteen of the twenty shuttles berthed and maintained there were out on maneuvers. The last shuttle sat by itself in a corner of the hangar, alone and forlorn, guarded by a pair of irritated-looking troopers. The shuttle had checked out fine the night before, but come morning the engines failed to start. The troopers had already been waiting more than an hour for a mechanic to arrive, check out the shuttle and determine the problem.

"About damn time," the human male trooper designated by the squad name "Rowdy" muttered as a landspeeder with the spaceport's maintenance markings came to a stop outside the hangar. He watched as a young Rodian woman with purple skin dressed in mechanic's coveralls got out of the vehicle and strode over to the shuttle, toolbox in hand.

"Aren't you a little young to be a starship mechanic?" inquired the second trooper, "Veil", a human woman.

"I'm what you've got," the young Rodian fired back in defiant Huttese. "You want another mechanic, I'll leave. You might see someone else out here by tomorrow."

Rowdy gave Veil an irritated look and then glanced at the Rodian mechanic. "There's no need for a delay," he said, leaning down to squint at her holo-id badge, "Ms. Reeli. I'm sure you're more than qualified," he said in a placating tone. "I just have to scan you to make sure you're not smuggling a bomb aboard or anything."

"Yeah, whatever," Reeli answered, cocking a hand on her hip and standing still while the trooper played a scanner over her body and toolbox.

"She checks out clean, no weapons or unapproved power sources," Rowdy said.

Veil snorted and shook her head. "Fine, let's go. Regulations say one of us has to supervise work on the shuttle." Veil keyed open the ramp and followed Reeli inside.

The Rodian wasted no time opening up the engine compartment and tinkering around inside. "Hey, here's the problem. Whoever serviced this last left their hydrospanner in here. The internal sensors picked up a foreign object inside the cowling and entered emergency shutdown." Reaching in between the engine components with long, delicate fingers, Reeli plucked a slender metal rod from inside, showing it to Veil, who frowned as she leaned over to take a look.

"Hydrospanner? That looks like a-" Veil never got to finish her sentence. Reeli flicked a switch on the lightsaber she'd hidden on the shuttle the night before after breaking into the hangar. The emitter crystal on the business end produced a _snap-hiss_ and a meter-long lance of crimson energy that stabbed through Veil's left eye and into her brainpan, killing the trooper instantly. Reeli deactivated the blade as the corpse fell to the floor with a clatter of armor on deck plating.

"What was that noise?" Rowdy asked from outside. Reeli heard his boots on the boarding ramp, and slipped into the shadows next to the door. As soon as the trooper stepped into view she activated the blade again and jabbed it into his sternum from the side, vaporizing the human's heart. Snapping the blade back off as he fell, she closed the boarding ramp, then dragged both bodies into a storage closet and locked them in.

With practiced ease, Reeli slipped into the cockpit and started the shuttle's launch sequence. Slipping a hands-free comlink headset on, she keyed it to the heavily encrypted band the mission was using, and spoke briefly. "Shadow One; transport acquired." Then she powered up the repulsors, guided the shuttle out of the hangar, and headed for Coronet City.

* * *

The Lastdark Club in Coronet City was perhaps the most exclusive institution on the planet. Situated on top of the tallest skyscraper on Corellia, the restaurant on the top floor had earned the name both because it was the last part of the city to be illuminated by the setting sun, and because its members fancied themselves the most 'enlightened' of Corellia's citizens.*

The floors below the restaurant were divided into a number of exclusive and hideously expensive hotel suites, rented out to the most affluent of visitors and Corellia natives. In addition to being furnished in the height of luxury and filled with every possible amenity, the Lastdark suites featured a discreet 24/7 concierge service that could obtain anything – legal or illicit – that a guest might desire, and security tight enough to protect even the most sought-after of celebrities from prying holojournalists.

Said security was composed of top of the line specialists recruited from Republic Special Forces and bodyguards experienced in guarding top luminaries, from Senators to Core World billionaires. They were hard, experienced men and women who had seen just about everything, so when one of the elevators in the lobby of the Lastdark suites opened, they took in the new arrivals instantly. First to emerge was a tall human woman with orange hair down to her shoulders, wide green eyes and a handful of freckles across her cheeks. A step behind her was a shorter crimson-skinned Twi'lek, covered from the neck up with angular tattoos, even on her lekku.

"You've very lost, ladies; there's no solicitation here," said the clerk behind the lobby's desk once he looked up from his terminal and saw their outfits.

The loose gray robe hanging off of the redhead's shoulders looked vaguely like something a Jedi might wear, but the rest of the outfit dispelled that illusion before it could even spring into mind. The robe was open down the front so that the rest of what she was wearing (or not wearing) was on display. High heeled boots of gray leather added several more inches to her height, showcasing her long, bare legs to considerable effect. The shimmering, sequined white skirt she wore was scandalously short, and the low-cut top showcased her breasts and cleavage, leaving very little to the imagination. An obviously fake lightsaber with a curved handle hung from the robe's belt loop and completed the "slutty Jedi" call girl outfit.

By contrast, the Twi'lek woman's outfit was night to the faux Jedi's day; all leather and metal studs and buckles, a tight corset that pushed up her full breasts and accented her waist, skin-hugging leather pants, black boots with spiked heels and a headdress of black leather straps that framed her face and wound around her lekku.

"Oh, handsome, we don't solicit," the redheaded human purred as the two women sashayed from the elevator to the desk in a swaying walk that had every male eye in the room on their asses. The Twi'lek leaned over the desk with a squeak of leather and gave the human male clerk more a view of her crimson cleavage than he seemed to be comfortable with. Dipping slender fingers of one hand into her brassiere, she came out with a laminated flimsi card. "We're invited everywhere we go," she added, finishing her companion's sentence.

A few of the guards snickered as the clerk gingerly took the card and ran it through a scanner. "I see," he said in a more modulated tone, disapproval masked if not gone. He pressed a button below the desk and a uniformed bellhop stepped out of the hallway behind him a moment later. "Please show these… ladies up to the Burgundy Suite. They are expected, I believe."

The bellhop, a leathery-faced Weequay, bowed and turned without comment, the pair swaying after him. They were lead through quiet, well-appointed halls and up another whisper-quiet turbolift to a pair of wooden double doors stained a dark red and intricately engraved. The Weequay knocked on the door, then bowed again and departed.

The door opened a moment later and a muscular human with a blaster at his waist but minus the visible armor of the guards downstairs glanced out, raising an eyebrow at what waited outside. "The evening's entertainment has arrived, I see," he observed sardonically. "Come in," he added as he stepped aside.

As soon as the door had opened, pulsing music escaped from the suite. Stepping inside, it got much louder, engulfing the pair in a wall of noise. Stepping past the door guards they walked down a short hallway before emerging into the suite's main room, a spacious and lushly furnished chamber with one entire wall formed of a single sheet of curving transparisteel with a stunning view of Coronet City stretching out to the horizon.

The room, dimly lit and with flickering lights playing over it, was occupied by more than a dozen young humans, all of university age and all male. Alcohol had plainly flowed freely earlier in the evening, and most of the party's attendees were visibly inebriated. They were all plainly from wealth, wearing clothes that probably cost more than a family living below made in a year.

The obvious center of the party was a young human male, leanly muscular with short dark hair and a neatly trimmed goatee, who sat on a couch surrounded by friends. He looked up when the pair of new arrivals entered, surprise on his face fading to amusement before he directed a glare at a skinny man with blond hair next to him and said something that was covered up by the music. The rest of the men in the room looked up to see, and a number of appreciative glances were directed at the Twi'lek and redhead. The skinny blond and the party's host got up from their seats and came over to where they were standing.

"Damn," the blond said, his eyes moving up and down their bodies in frank admiration. "Your agency delivers!"

The dark-haired man punched his companion lightly in the shoulder with a grin. "Ass." Then he turned to them. "Ladies, welcome to my party. Roderik here apparently sent out more invitations than I was aware of. My name is Marcus."

_No it isn't,_ the redhead thought as she smiled pleasantly. "I'm Cerria and this is Vette," she said, gesturing to her Twi'lek companion. "We're here on express orders to make sure you have a _very_ happy birthday." _Or at least a memorable one._

Roderik, who had edged away from the conversation, was fiddling with a sophisticated set of controls mounted in the wall. As they watched, a section of the floor near the windows slid back and a small stage complete with a pair of floor-to-ceiling metal poles slid up and into place. Marcus laughed when he saw it. "That's why you insisted on this suite, Rod?" The blonde nodded with a grin. "Would you ladies like to dance for us?" Marcus asked.

"We're here for whatever makes you happy," Cerria replied before she and Vette made their way to the stage. The males in the room were cheering as the pair took the stage, and neither disappointed. Vette danced with the natural grace of a Twi'lek, honed by years of experience in fine muscle control. Cerria's movements were smooth and controlled with the inherent agility of her training, but not nearly as polished as Vette's. Cerria had learned just enough to get by from Vette during the week it had taken the _Pride's Fall_ to execute a complicated series of jumps to reach the outskirts of the Corellia system, but her audience was too absorbed in admiring her long legs and toned rear in the too-short skirt to care if her dancing was somewhat basic.

They took breaks for a few lap dances; when one of the guys' hands found its way onto the leather covering Vette's ass, she slapped his hand away gently, tapping him under the chin with a finger and giving him a look of reproach. "The birthday boy's the only one who gets to open his presents," she chided with a wink, eliciting a round of inebriated cheers and drunken looks of envy at Marcus from the other males.

Soon after the party guests started to filter out, heading for the elevators that would take them down to the skyscraper's basement where their personal drivers and repulsor-limos awaited. Roderik was the last to leave, smirking at his friend. Then Cerria and Vette were alone with Marcus, his bodyguards unobtrusive but present.

"So now what?" Marcus asked lazily, sitting on the couch with one arm around each gorgeous woman.

"Now? Whatever you want," Cerria purred. "Either of us. Both of us. We're here for you." _Whatever gets one or both of us alone with you, morsel,_ she added mentally.

Marcus finished his drink and then rose to his feet with a satisfied grin. "Then I say… you, with me," he stated, extending a hand and drawing Cerria to her feet, "and you, show these guys a good time. They do so much for me," he added to Vette, nodding at his two bodyguards. Nodding, Vette uncurled from the couch and prowled over to the grinning pair. Marcus held onto Cerria's hand as he pulled her into the palatial master bedroom, closing the door behind him. Then his hands were all over her, and she feigned enthusiasm in return, letting him explore her body as she caressed his in turn, all the while listening to the miniaturized comlink in her ear.

Marcus had relieved Cerria of her top and was fondling her breasts when she heard Lieutenant Pierce's deep male voice, "Shadow Two; security systems are down." She was playing with Marcus' hair while his hand slid under her skirt when the comlink activated again thirty seconds later. "Shadow Three, guards neutralized." That was Vette.

"Finally," Cerria muttered almost inaudibly and with some exasperation. "This guy's got more hands than a Mon Calamari demon squid."

"What was that, babe?" Marcus inquired.

"Just the rest of the gang reporting in," she said cheerfully. He looked at her, puzzled, and Cerria had the small satisfaction of watching his face go pale when her eyes shifted from emerald green to glowing yellow as she drew on the Force.

"You're-" was all he had time to blurt out before Cerria blurred into movement, shoving him face-first onto the bed, getting him in an arm lock and wrapping an arm around his neck, applying pressure to his larynx and carotid.

"Sith?" Cerria hissed into his ear as he struggled frantically under her. "That's right, lovely boy, and you are Riven Regus, Grand Moff Regus' only son and best kept secret. He's already committed treason to hide you among the Republic's scions of privilege, so imagine what he'll do you keep you alive?" She rode out his struggles until he passed out, murmuring "Sweet dreams, morsel," in his ear before the terror boiling in his mind faded to unconsciousness. Reaching into his mind with the Force, she pushed him deeper into sleep, ensuring he would be out cold for hours. "Shadow Four, target acquired," she said to empty air.

"Shadow One acknowledges; on site in two minutes," came Reeli's voice.

Cerria reclaimed her top and robe, tying it shut across the front with satisfaction. Then she hefted Riven over her shoulder with a Force boost to her strength and headed out into the living room, dumping the unconscious playboy on the couch. The bodyguards were sprawled out on the floor, one with his neck twisted at an unnatural angle, the other simply bruised and securely restrained with his own binders.

Vette strolled out of the kitchen, an open bottle of lomin ale in each hand. She gave one to Cerria, who took a drink, then glanced at the corpse of the unlucky guard. "What happened there?"

Vette spat on the body in response. "That one fell into the category of humans who don't even think Twi'leks are people. What he said he would do to me…" she shuddered. "Corellia's better off without him."

Cerria shrugged. "No argument here." The human and the Twi'lek turned to the suite's entrance when they heard a pair of blaster shots outside. Each of them picked up a bodyguard's pistol and aimed at the outer door as it opened. Then they lowered their weapons as Pierce stepped through, smoking rifle at his side.

Pierce and Vette checked in on each other while Cerria took another drink and then pointed to the window. "I do believe our ride has arrived." A large, dark silhouette of a vehicle had broken off from the nearest lane of airspeeder traffic. Alarms started going off outside and in the suite as the blocky shuttle intruded into the Lastdark Club's airspace. Two blossoms of fire leapt from the shuttle's missile tubes and hit the roof a few floors above them, rocking the building as they destroyed the anti-air battery installed on top of the building.

"Awaiting confirmation, Shadow Four," came Reeli's calm voice as the shuttle hovered outside the window.

Cerria placed herself between Pierce, Vette and Riven and the window. She raised one hand, and her eyes glowed brighter with poison yellow light. "Fire."

The shuttle's laser cannons opened up on the thick, tempered transparisteel of the window, which darkened at first, attempting to absorb the energy. Another volley, and the superheated material failed, shattering into countless jagged pieces that flew into the suite, peppering everything with lethal shrapnel except for Cerria and those behind her, as the sparking purple shield of ionic energy she created protected them from the lethal rain. Then all three of them were in motion, Pierce slinging Riven over his shoulder as Reeli maneuvered the shuttle closer, battling the howling winds at their altitude and lowering the boarding ramp.

Cerria assisted Pierce and Vette in the leap to the shuttle before making the jump herself, pounding a fist on the bulkhead behind the cockpit once she was in and the ramp slid up. "Go, go, go!"

"Acknowledged," Reeli replied, and then Cerria had to grab a handful of crash webbing as the Rodian pilot executed a stomach-churning turn and rocketed up towards space. "Shadow Four, get on the turret. Shadow Two, get up here." Cerria climbed into the shuttle's laser turret while Pierce ducked into the cockpit and Vette slapped binders on Riven before securing him in his seat and buckling in herself.

The assault shuttle was rocking with laser hits as Cerria buckled into the chair. Sensors showed half a squadron of Republic fighters closing in on them, firing relentlessly. "I think they're upset," Cerria murmured as she started returning fire with deadly accuracy. Unlike the pretty boy and his bodyguards, Cerria took no joy in having to fight pilots of the Republic. Sadness gnawed at her heart as one of the fighters exploded under her sustained fire. She'd accepted that she could do more good for the Republic as Shen's apprentice than as a Jedi, and in this situation it was kill or die, with too much at stake to lose. That didn't make killing good soldiers any easier. Every life she had to take was a scar that would burn inside her forever; seeing an end to the war was the only salve that would make those wounds hurt less.

The assault shuttle was slower than the fighters, but its shields were strong, it was well armed, and between Pierce firing missiles and a Sith at the guns, they defeated the harassing fighters shortly after leaving the atmosphere. Republic cruisers and fighters formed a web above them that would catch them long before they exited the gravity well, and in any case the assault shuttle didn't have a hyperdrive, but they didn't need one. Instead Reeli set course for a massive, slab-sided bulk freighter larger than two cruisers put together that was one of countless civilian ships fleeing from what was about to become a free-fire zone.

Their shuttle was drawing close when explosive bolts in the bulk freighter's hull detonated, breaking its massive outer hull plates into hundreds of long metal rods that drifted away from the center, revealing a smaller but still massive vessel inside; a golden cube of alien design bristling with powerful force fields. Reeli poured power to the engines and headed for the _Pride's Fall's_ landing bay.

While they closed on the _Pride's Fall_, Cerria watched from the turret as half of the rods from the shattered hull plates stopped drifting and oriented themselves towards the planet below. Even though this part was her master's plan and Shen's burden to bear, Cerria felt tightness in her chest and stinging in her eyes as she watched what followed. The rods caught in the magnetic grapples of the _Pride's Fall_ blurred into motion, each one a lance plunging down at Corellia, disappearing from sight and then reappearing as crimson lines once they hit the atmosphere.

Cerria had been in the planning session for the mission, so she knew each one of those durasteel rods was massive enough to survive atmospheric entry intact. Orbital kinetic strikes had fallen out of fashion once space cruisers had grown large enough to conduct turbolaser bombardment, but the force of a huge piece of metal falling from low orbit to the ground was still significant, and tiny orange fireballs dotted Corellia's surface as they hit. Cerria shuddered, feeling thousands of deaths through the Force.

If the attack had been directed at Coronet City itself or other populous areas, the death toll would be in the billions. But the first strike had been on a few dozen military targets, only one of which was in the city itself, and had been targeted with the smallest rods to minimize collateral damage.

As the shuttle slipped into the docking bay of the _Pride's Fall_, Republic ships closed in with a vengeance, and Cerria saw the other half of the drifting rods stop moving and start orbiting around the Rakata ship with increasing speed. The deck of the _Pride's Fall_ shuddered as the ship broke orbit and started heading for deep space, Republic ships in pursuit, opening fire with turbolasers and launching fighters. But the hundred or so rapidly orbiting metal rods provided significant defense on top of the ship's powerful shields. Fighters couldn't get close enough to harass them, and many turbolaser strikes blew apart metal rods before they could hit the ship. By the time the _Pride's Fall _escaped Corellia's gravity well it was relatively unscathed.

* * *

"We're clear of the planet's gravity well and free to jump to hyperspace!" The navigation officer called out as the _Pride's Fall_ shuddered from another volley fired by the pursing Republic cruisers.

"Confirm Shadow team is on board and has the package, commander," Shen demanded of her first officer from her spot in the ship's true bridge, interfacing with the Rakata computer in the glowing ring of runes. It was rare for a Sith to directly captain a warship, but since no one but Shen and Cerria could talk to the computer, she had little choice.

"Confirmed, my Lord," the stolid Imperial officer replied.

"Good." Before they jumped, Shen deployed the final bit of misdirection; a comm buoy of Rakata manufacture. That done, she instructed the computer to make the jump to hyperspace, and the stars blurred into a kaleidoscope swirl.

When and if the Republic ever managed to translate the recording in ancient Rakata left behind in the comm buoy, they would be treated to a paranoid rant from a long-dead alien despot about the price of invading the territory of others. It would keep them scratching their heads for a while and avoid an immediate escalation in the war that would have accompanied an openly Imperial orbital strike on Corellia.

Reviewing sensor records of the kinetic strike, Shen allowed herself a hard smile. The hits on Republic military supply caches had been window dressing; her real targets had been twofold. The first was Riven Regus, whose capture would bring one of the Empire's most powerful Grand Moffs to her side. The second was the only target in Coronet City; a facility belonging to a senior Republic officer who was actually Baras' most highly placed spy, and keeper of his most closely guarded secrets.

Shen knew that she and Baras were approaching the endgame now. It had been a year since Shen had snuck back onto Belsavis posing as ordinary Sith juggernaut. In between bringing the alien gangs into line and suppressing the violent, xenophobic Esh-kha, Shen had – with the help of an errant Jedi – located the prison holding Baras' older sister, and cut down the old Darth before she could bolster Baras' forces with her own. Shen had even let the bald Miralian Jedi who helped her live; he had never seen her face.

Seven months ago she had ventured to the Force-rich world of Voss and brought the enigmatic Force-sensitive natives into the Empire's fold by revealing the ancient mistakes of the Jedi on their world. She had also ventured into that world's heart of darkness, done battle with the minions of a powerful being composed of pure dark-side energy and freed the imprisoned spirit of the Sith Emperor himself.

Now with Baras' data network shattered, his allies wavering, the Dark Council sensing his weakness and the Emperor slowly regaining strength it was almost time: time to face Cyl and her old master, and remove their stain from the galaxy forever.

* * *

Pierce and Vette volunteered to drag Riven off to find him a comfortable cell while Cerria headed for her own quarters, tired and soul-sick from all the killing. Pressing her palm to the biometric reader, she slipped into her apartment, sensing through the Force a pair of warm presences that lifted her heart.

A tall, muscular man with slicked back hair so pale blond it was almost white, piercing gray eyes and a simple Sith tattoo on one cheek rose to his feet as she entered the living room, smiling as he turned to greet her. Cerria felt relieved happiness as she let him engulf her in his arms, and their opened to each other in the Force as they embraced physically. She buried her face in his shoulder and let the day's experiences flow from her into Caleb, her gloriously unique Sith husband.

Waking up in a prison cell on the _Pride's Fall_ after being abducted from Tython had gone from being the worst experience of Cerria's life to the best. She'd expected to be killed, tortured, or subjected to heavy-handed attempts to turn her to the dark side. Instead, she'd found herself confronted with a reasonable, civil and very _human_ jailor who didn't want anything from Cerria but someone to listen. She had listened, and been compelled by what she heard. Here was a Sith who wanted to end the war, and had a shot at doing it. One whose allies followed her out of respect, not fear. Once Shen was convinced Cerria wouldn't try to harm her crew, she'd been given actual quarters on the _Pride's Fall _instead of a cell.

Once she was ready to listen, Shen's offer had been simple. "If you can't bring yourself to work with me, you can remain my guest until Baras is dead and I don't need to keep nearly as many secrets. Then I'll send you back to the Republic if you wish. But if you want to help me make peace a reality, then join me, and the day will come sooner when this war will end."

Even then, Cerria had held lingering suspicions, but meeting Caleb that had broken down the last barriers in her mind. Like many Sith who didn't revel in violence, Caleb had flocked to Shen's banner for a chance to make the Empire better. It had stunned Cerria to encounter a Sith whose soul shone with unfettered light, a man as kind and peaceful as any she had met among the Jedi, who had nonetheless dedicated himself to the cause of revolution.

Cerria had fallen in love with Caleb, and in doing so had found herself. Raised as a Jedi, Cerria had accepted that the Order was the only family she could ever have. The first time she had given in to her own desires and emotion and slept with Caleb she had expected that they would drift apart afterwards; that just like when she was a Padawan, physical liaisons were the end of a relationship that was forbidden to go any further.

Instead, Caleb had asked her to marry him, and in a moment of stunning revelation, Cerria realized that she didn't have to be a Jedi; that if Caleb could have a place among the Sith, she could too, and have the family she hadn't realized how badly she wanted until it was right in front of her.

The year and a half since had been the happiest of Cerria's life. Wrapped in Caleb's mental and physical embrace, she reached out to the second warm presence in the apartment; her four-month old daughter, Maeve. She felt her sleepy baby's awareness that mama was home before Caleb's kiss shattered her concentration.

"Part of me wants to go find that brat and hurt him for daring to touch you like that," Caleb murmured, and Cerria blinked before she realized he was talking about Riven. In addition to being a skilled Force healer Caleb was as gifted in empathy as she was, though his power was more focused. He could see even deeper into the true hearts of others than she could, but he had to be touching them, whereas Cerria could read people from almost a kilometer away.

Cerria winced. "It didn't mean anything, love. It was the only way to get close enough to him to perform the extraction."

He kissed her again, gently. "I know." Drawing back a bit, he tugged on the sash of her robe, drawing it open to look at the outfit underneath before glancing back up with a hungry light that made her stomach flutter. "I'm still feeling a very male urge to mark my territory, however."

Cerria laughed softly. "So I'm territory now. In Sith parlance, is that an upgrade or downgrade from 'wife'?"

"They both mean 'everything'," he replied. "You are my everything, Cerria."

It wasn't fair. They'd been married for more than a year, and he could still make her knees week when his love for her shone through his aura like a beacon. Raised to believe she could never allow herself to love like that, to _be_ loved like that, the feeling was still intoxicating. "I should go check on Maeve…" she protested half-heartedly.

Caleb's arms tightened around her and she looked up, startled at his amused expression. "Oh, no you don't. She's been fed and put to bed for the evening and her smoking-hot mommy isn't getting away from me that easily." He kissed her again, and her repulsor-train of thought derailed almost immediately.

Unlike the empty gestures she'd used to entrap Riven, this kiss meant something. This was _her _everything. The fact that Caleb could let her go on a mission like that and welcome her back without a hint of doubt or censure was a gift. She could feel his amusement and ardor as her fingers started divesting him of his robes even before he slipped hers from her shoulders. Then amusement gave way to other things as they shared, body and soul.

* * *

*Full credit for the Lastdark Club to Michael Stackpole, author of _I, Jedi_ and other amazing Star Wars Expanded Universe books

Author's Note: Thanks go out to DarthDjek for catching some of the grammatical wrinkles I failed to iron out after putting this chapter together!


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